haven't blogged for ages - really not sure if anyone reads this blog at all anymore, but for what it's worth, if you are reading then i thought i'd give you my first thoughts on skipping.
skiping - not the rope game you play at primary school but the art of getting free food from skips - the best ones seem to be M&S and waitrose.
we have claire (aka treehouse claire) staying with us for a bit. claire has lived for long time on a protest site near edinburgh and they don't buy food they skip it. so what you do is got to a skip at the back of a supermarket and take your shopping bags with you and look for rich pickings. there are ground rules such as, don't make a mess, leave the bin as you find it (including tying up bags you open and not tipping unwanted food out into the bin), don't jump fences or break and enter (too naughty even for me) and keep cool if the securtiy or police ask you questions.
aside from the obvious things about the art of skipping which are:
1. free food
2. keeping waste out of landfill becasue you eat it and then recycle packaging
3. exciting nighttime adventures
you're also doing other things like making a really important stand for the hard work of others and the damage to the environment caused by our food industry.
for example, in the last couple of days we've rescued prefectly edible food which has been produced in kenya and israel. both these countries are places of serious unrest at present and yet they worked hard, possible for little money, to make a perfect looking grapefruit (possibly getting ill in the process from chemicals used by farmers) or other product which we have then decided is no longer wuite good enough for our western p[alettes. goodness knows why - they look amazing.
or simply that these foods get produced so far away that the cost to our pockets and to the earth for their transportation becomes insulting when we so quickly discard them as unwanted and our wallets just pay the price elsewhere for this waste. the cost to the environment is then worsened, like adding salt to an open wound, by putting the produce and it's packaging in landfill thus adding to many problems we are already dealing with in our country.
last night we came back with a treacle tart, a steak pie, 2 apple pies, 4 figs, 4 punnets of raspberries, 3 punnets of bluberries, a basket of flowering hyacinths, loads of assorted veg, bread, chocolate puddings, crisps, thai green chicken curry, 4 cucumbers, 4 tubs of aaorted margarine, a bottle of fresh juice, stuffed peppers, posh cheeses and other stuff that i can't remember right now.
when the police did a drive by (at the back of waitrose) they were polite and listened to our clear explanation that we were getting food. they asked if we were really that hungry and claire explained that we weren't hungry at all but thought it was unnecessary so much food had to go to waste and all the police said was 'be careful'. they watched from their car for a couple of minutes then drove off. talk about sharing the good news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6 comments:
i still keep an eye on your blog! if there are others out there, comment so Bea knows to keep blogging!
glad to have you back. more pics would be good (especially as, as Andy will tell you, you cannow use Corbis images on a blog for free if you credit them). skipping sounds tasty!
and on the issue of transport distances, not only is there an impact on the way poorer countries create food for the western world and have it shipped over only for us to then bin it, but we then pay poorer countries like india to take our rubbish off us and fill their lands with it...
so, they make something, we buy it off them, then we pay them to take it back again and pollute their own country with stuff they made and had flown half way round the world and flown back again, all cause they need the money...
messed up.
I read your blog Bea!
Skipping just sounds too logical for words. There's just no excuse for us to be as wasteful as we are with food.
Ruth
Hey Bea... I read your blog and think of you oft. I am happy you are blogging agian. Becaause somewhere I know we are so connected. Even though I hve not spent much time with you. Know what I mean.
And here we call it "dumpster diving". My older brother taught me how to do this when I was in high school. There is a movement called food not bombs who has made quite an impact sharing "skipped" food.
And another thing... if you go to consignment shops or thrift stores you can get all kinds of rubbish and make rugs and other "upcycled" fashions as we call it. Just ask for the stuff that won't sell. They always have it in the back. So cool..... I am making my first recycled braided rug right now.
Oh I think you are an inspiration Bea.... pls. keep blogging!!!!
Hi Bea, Susan and David mentioned the concept of skipping to us when we were over at the weekend and I thought it sounded fab, so I googled it when we came home and low and behold, up came your blog on the first page! - there seems to be very little written about it, certainly under that name! I thought M&S gave all their unwanted food to the homeless??
Love Heather xx
Bea will give more details, but i get the impression M&S are really not that helpful at all - they slashed a lot of their food and covered it in blue dye to stop people getting it out of their skips.
i'd heard that pret a manger were supposed to give their stuff away, but our skipping friend reported back that they dont, at least not near her.
waitrose on the other hand - a veritable treasure trove of skipped goods!
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