Food from Skips......

VfM4meplse

gitw wrote: »

I'm not going to let my ethics be swayed by the ridiculous threat of prosecution for taking food that no-one else wants and is going to be thrown away.

Sanctimonious b*llocks from a tightwad.

jigsaw1234 wrote: »

i work in a shop and you can guarentee every morning before we got a lock on the bin someone had been in there and spread everything over the car park and taken what they want. so now i open every single packet and pour milk or coke over it so no one can take it.

missy- wrote: »

I know that the supermarkets used to pour bleach over the food in the skips to discourage people taking it!

The food has got to be denatured in this way in order to prevent either a direct, or indirect public health risk by encouraging vermin. As other posters have pointed out, the risk of litigation is high. No-one seems to care about the additional burden to the NHS by this selfish behaviour.

I too really hate waste but at least realise that I am limited to modifying my own behaviour. To suggest, as the OP has that they have no food budget is an outright lie, we have a system of social support to ensure that non-one in this country starves. Reprioritise your spending and you can afford to eat.

argamemnon

Personally i think that if these shop's reduced things by proper reductions there would be a lot less going to these skips, Our local Tesco often reduce by pence seen items reduced from 38p to 35p even remarked on the fact the label cost's the company more than the reduction, Its discusting that theres so much food waste..i fully surport people to take from skips if i had the balls i'd be doing it

mrcol1000

gitw wrote: »

if supermarkets were forced to act responsibly and not overstock so they have so much waste perhaps we as consumers would see a reduction in our shopping bills, and maybe some people would have the choice of able to shop in a shop rather than go skipping.....

If consumers weren't so choosy and expected to get exactly what they wanted when they wanted then supermarkets wouldn't have to overstock. It's very easy to blame supermarkets but they are just giving us what we want. Its cheaper for them to throw food away than risk losing customers to a rival because their carrots are more orange than theirs.

redrising

I used to work in a Budgens supermarket and we would reduce prices on short dated items constantly throughout the day. At the end of the day we would just chuck it, (not my choice) none of it went to charities, but as I was in the management team I would make deals with customers when none of the other managers were on. Free flowers to regular customers, freebies to people spending etc.
Basically I'd pile stuff up on a trolley at the front of the store and let people help themselves. Legally I was on very dodgy ground but it stopped us producing so much waste and any money we did get from it went in the tills. I never got in trouble for doing it.

If you're as hard up as you say, just talk to a store manager. Make it clear you are having a hard time and you'd like to offer him something for goods about to be thrown. Offer to sign a declaration that shows you are fully aware of what you are asking. If at the end of the day he is cutting the stores financial losses by a few pence, it's worth doing all around plus you should get it before the bin does that reduces the yuck factor.

hollieinbloom

i worked in a bakery and as one of the items sold was bread pudding, at the end of the day the baker would come in and take all left over bread and make it into this bread pudding or we could take it home ourselves. as it was just a weekend job, i would take like 5 loaves home and have enough bread for my parents to keep in the freezer! Now i have my own home, i tend to just buy reduced bread if i can.

We used to have tonnes of sandwiches and cream cakes left over, but they spoil and the lady i worked for used to take some sandwiches down to the pub every saturday night!! that pub was very popular for free sandwiches xx

aau1

jigsaw1234 wrote: »

i think its disguting. i work in a shop and you can guarentee every morning before we got a lock on the bin someone had been in there and spread everything over the car park and taken what they want. so now i open every single packet and pour milk or coke over it so no one can take it.

I seem to be one of the few on here who agrees with your actions. If people are going to spread the contents of the bin over the car park then this causes all sorts of problemss that the store has to deal with/pay for. Trip hazards, attracting rats/foxes, accidents from cars swerving to avoid litter or skidding on slippery patches, never mind the visual eyesore and waste of resources in paying someone to clean it up when it was tidied away in a bin n the firstplace

If they only took what they wanted and left the place clean and tidy then it wouldn't have led you to take actions to ruin the stock. They have only themselves to blame for wasting a good thing that they might have had going

Fortunately for me, my local reduces everything down to 10% of the retail price at 6pm everyday so they have very little waste and I dont have to resort to raiding bins to get my bargains. I have got recently

8 pork loin steaks for 81p
3 raw chickens for 40p each
1 cooked chicken for 58p
2 rump steaks for 40p
4 salmon fillets for 80p
1.5kg lean mince for 75p
4 pizzas for 37p each
punnets of grapes for 23p
punnets of strawberries for 25p
bunches of bananas for 10p
loaves for 6p
and a whole lot more that I can't be bothered typing out

Its all either up that day or, more often than not, display until that day and use the next. Except the loaves which they mark down to 6p TWO DAYS before it is up

Its a shame more stores dont follow this example or there would be a LOT less waste and nothing left for people to steal out of bins

ska_lover

I totally agree on the 'reductions' not being enough to tempt people into buying something that needs using by that night. To buy them you do need to be open to suggestions about what you are having from your tea that night, and a 20p reduction might not shift them.
I totally agree, they really should let them go for pennys at the end of the day. It really could benefit someone