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People scrounging (or stealing) food from supermarket bins

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If I paid to have one of those big skips placed outside of our house with the intentions of filling it with my "junk", I wouldn't have any problems with somebody coming along and taking that junk out of the skip. After all, it would be doing me a favour because I could put more "junk" in the skip then.

BUT......apparantly, once I put my "junk" in a skip that I've paid for it becomes the property of the person who I'm renting the skip from. Therefore anybody coming along and helping themselves to my "junk" is technically stealing from the hire company.

 

Are you still following this? Crazy isn't it but apparantly that's the law!

 

I don't think it allways used to be like this. When I was growing up I think it was much more clearly defined..............if you chucked anything away then it became fair game for anybody who took a fancy to what you'd thrown out. Those were the days when bins were bins.............you chucked your rubbish in a bin and it no longer belonged to you because you had thrown it away.

 

I can remember going around the back of our local shops about 50 years ago! There were big bins there even back then and us kids used to love rummaging through them. One time we found loads of fake chocolate displays and it was just like winning the lottery. We could only ever dream of actually owning a box of chocs like the fake one's that we found, but seeing the glossy chocolate replica's felt sooooo good. I suppose that experience is something that anybody under the age of about 50 can't even begin to imagine because chocolate is so readily available for all now.

We were chased away from the back of these shops everytime we sneaked in but nobody took our "finds" off us and nobody threatened to call the law or anything like. The shopkeepers didn't want us there because we would scour through the bins and leave debris all over the place............which they had to pick up. lol.

Bins were bins in those days and rubbish was rubbish...........one man's meat etc.

That's how it should be now. Anything that's thrown out should be fair game to everybody else.

 

It really angers me to see the massive amount of waste thrown out by the supermarkets when there are hungry people in this country...........which is supposed to be a civilised nation! There is just too much health and safety interference these days.

Food items which are perfectly safe to eat but past their sell by date should be donated to charity or left by the roadside with a big sign telling people to help themselves.

I think it's despicable that staff employed by some of our supermarkets are actually paid to pulverise bread rather then hand it out to the needy.

This country really does STINK!

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For many Freegans its part of their anti-consumerist lifestyle. Though I have heard its easy to get fat as a Freegan as much discarded food is out of date ready meals. I guess you just have to pick carefully.

 

There was a TV show recently where they set up a restaurant night only using stuff that had been thrown away by supermarkets. They even found a load of wine that had been chucked out because a single bottle had smashed in the box.

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Good luck to them its not as bad as those stealing metal from skips and gardens

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If people need to take waste food from skips I would suggest that we should look at the reasons why. The real issue here is that people feel the need to take the waste food rather than buy it fresh. This is the issue that needs to be addressed.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by rotherhamgir View Post

i saw a tv show i think it was wife swap but im not sure and these people did it, and they were saying it was a way of life to them as they didnt see the point in wasting money on buying the food in daylight hours because when the store is shut or close to shutting it gets thrown out and then is free. legal or illegal i kind of see why some people do it, whats point in paying for something when its sat round the corner for free lol.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jackie2141 View Post

Read the above link, it`s illegal

 

Where did he try to claim that it wasn't?

 

Replying to this part of the post perhaps ?. (my bold)

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One simple way to stop all this supermarket waste of perfectly eatable food would be for the goverment to implement an extortionate amount of money for them to be able to dump the food into landfill. Maybe that would give them a better incentive to distribute the food out free, rather than dump it.

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Agreed some "laws" are just daft. If its in the bin and people can get to it without causing any damage then fair play to them.

 

What you have to consider though is staff in say, a supermarket, hiding some steak or something, until it reaches its use by date, then alerting someone they know that some steaks are going to be thrown away.

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Only slightly off topic , but it's not just shops that throw away perfectly edible goods. My daughter used to earn pocket money waitressing for an events company. She told us that when they were doing an event at the races tons of good food was just dumped because of elf and safety. She came back one time and said "oh Mum , it was awful cos I could just imagine how much you'd have enjoyed the fresh crab and seafood " but they were not allowed to bring any home. The cooperate hospitality must have cost a fortune and all went in the bin.

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I cannot believe some of the attitudes in this thread.

Rather than asking about whether taking food from bins is illegal, shouldn't we be asking, why in this day and age are some people forced to seek an existance by taking food from a supermarket bin?

 

I don't know which bit has made me more depressed.....the fact that people are seemingly that much in need that they need to do this to survive or the fact that some people seem more interested that someone may be commiting a crime.

:(

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I used to work at Tesco and this happened every day. There used to be a bloke who came every Sunday with his son during the day to take from the bins.

 

I can personally see why they do it, We had to throw things away when they passed the 'display by' date when the 'use by' date might be a few days away so the food was perfectly edible. Probably saved themselves a lot of money!

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I remember a few years ago when M and S were having their extension to the rear at Meadowhall.

I was working security and a charity organisation came around to ask if they could take the out of date food by the side entrance.

 

I radioed the on duty manager who just gave a curt " no".

However, I just told the chap that I would not be in that area at a particular time and to collect it !

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