(Photo: Huffington Post)
One man’s trash is another man’s….dinner? Buying groceries can be expensive…What would you do to save money? Would you go as far as to dig in the dumpster. A college student in Washington DC discovered a way to save money on food and that was not to spend any money at all. He gets his food for free! Seriously. He discovered that there is perfectly edible food just waiting for him in the dumpster. Yep. He finds bread in the back of bakeries. He finds produce and meat in the back of supermarkets. And he’s been doing this for years. Check out the article below.
William Reid, a graduate student at American University, has spent only $5.50 on store-bought groceries in the past two years. Total. As in, $2.75 a year.
The rest he finds on his own. Dumpster diving.Before working for the D.C. Public Library, he told USA TODAY College that his tight budget left him eating cheap, unhealthy foods.This whole “food experiment,” as he calls it, happened after volunteering with an organization called Food Not Bombs, where he and his colleagues solicited donations of food, then cooked it and provided it to people in public spaces. This donated food, Reid explains, would have otherwise been bound for the landfill.
“My interest was sort of piqued because of all the food that was being donated to us that was perfectly good that they were intending to through out. So the assumption, of course, is that places that don’t donate their food must also have a lot of great food that they’re actually throwing away,” he said. “So [Dumpster diving] started as a fun exploration, and then more and more it became clear that there was enough of that stuff that somebody could provide.”
Reid describes a large range of foods he finds behind local supermarkets and pharmacies in the D.C. area, including fruits, vegetables, juice, milk, meat and even chocolate croissants, which he picked up for breakfast in the trash of his local bakery. between $6,000 and $10,000 worth of food from the Dumpster.
