Food waste in Bonn "Dumpster-diving is a symptom of overproduction"

Bonn · Every day, food that is still edible ends up in the refuse. How are private individuals and associations in Bonn working against food waste? What is legal, what is not?

Foodsharing in Bonn: Private individuals have legally collected food from a supermarket.

Foodsharing in Bonn: Private individuals have legally collected food from a supermarket.

Foto: Angelika Richter

Oranges, lettuce, chocolate and cheese lie in their original packaging in supermarket bins. Food whose sell-by date has expired is often no longer sold, even if, as Marion Siewert (72) and Tom Becker (31) (name changed) report, it has not yet gone bad. In the supermarket, for example, a net of lemons is being sorted out because one fruit is spoiled. The lemons cannot be sold individually, so they are all discarded. "I can't stand that such great food is in the bin," says the 72-year-old, who went dumpster-diving regularly for two years.

Dumpster-diving, also known as skipping, means foraging for food out of a supermarket skip, or dumpster. But this is a criminal offence. "For me, it's also a political statement," says Becker, who has also rescued food from skips in Bonn. But even if the goods are in the trash, they are still the property of the seller. Taking them out of the skip is theft and can have legal consequences. If caught, you can expect a fine or, in the worst case, face a prison sentence of up to five years.

Call to legalise dumpster-diving

But this could soon change. There are plans to make salvaging food from supermarket skips legal. The Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) and the Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir (Greens) are in favour of such a move. In a draft law discussed in the Bundestag on 26 January 2023, the parliamentary group Die Linke called for decriminalising dumpster-diving.

It would be a win-win, says Marion Siewert, who used to have a podiatry practice in Bad Godesberg. "I remember hearing in 2018 that there were bins overflowing with good food," she recalls. Having little money herself, she said she stopped by a shop and checked. "At first I did it on my own, then later with my husband or with a friend. I sometimes went out three times a day and picked rescued food from the waste," says Siewert. Becker reports: " Some of the students around me were doing it at the time." Sometimes he met other people at the skips. "Then we divided everything up in a very cooperative way and saw who needed what," he says.

A lot of food in the bins is still edible

Once, an entire bin was filled with hazelnuts, Siewert reports, "I would never have been able to afford some of the food." Most of it was still edible, she says. But when food had been in a skip for a long time, it could be full of flies or spoiled. " One time, a refrigeration unit must have broken down. There were so many items in the rubbish that we drove there by car, loaded everything up and then distributed it in our flat-share and throughout the entire housing block," Becker remembers.

"I sometimes didn't go foraging until around 11 p.m. to avoid meeting supermarket staff." Siewert reports. In the two years she dumpster-dived she was caught several times by security personnel or shop employees. But she was always just ticked off and there were no further consequences for her. Over time she noticed that "they did a lot of things to make it difficult for us to get access to the bins. First they put them upside down, then they put bars on them." This is something that Becker, who has been dumpster-diving in various cities for about five years, confirms.

Saving food legally

Marion Siewert no longer goes foraging, but she wants to take legal action against food waste, which still shocks her. A third of all food in Germany ends up in the bin, according to a study by the Federal Environment Agency. That is about eleven million tonnes a year. Food waste is responsible for the third highest CO2 emissions worldwide, after the USA and China, says Stefan Kreutzberger (61), who co-founded the Foodsharing association in 2012.

Foodsharing has made it its mission to legally save food before it ends up in the bin. This means members can pick up food from supermarkets that would otherwise be thrown away. "We are active nationwide," says Kreutzberger.

The cause is overproduction

The association is also known in Bonn. Julia Kutschke, company spokesperson for Edeka Mohr, reports that all branches now cooperate with Foodsharing Bonn. "They regularly pick up food from us that would otherwise go in the trash can." She could not give any information about skips at the moment. But as far as foodsharing, the legal way of saving food, is concerned, Kutschke says: "It's a great thing. Food that we can no longer sell gets a second chance." Since the company started working with Foodsharing, the amount of food that is thrown away has been reduced enormously.

According to the Federal Centre for Nutrition (Bundeszentrum für Ernährung), retailers are responsible for about seven per cent of food thrown away, while private households cause about 59 per cent of food waste.

Kreutzberger is glad that dumpster-diving may soon no longer be a punishable offence. As is Becker. But he says this would still not solve the root problem: "Foraging from skips is only a symptom of overproduction," says the 31-year-old. Everyone interviewed agrees that the most important thing is to fight food waste and thus the underlying cause.

(Original text: Felizia Schug; TRANSLATION: Jean Lennox)

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