Dumpster diving is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners but deemed useful to the picker. It is not confined to dumpsters and skips specifically and may cover standard household waste containers, curb sides, landfills or small dumps.
Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans avoid buying, consuming, using, and wearing animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.
A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a foodservice retail store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops.
Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, sharing free vegan and vegetarian food with others. The group believes that corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance. To demonstrate this, FNB serves surplus food gathered from grocery stores, bakeries and markets which would otherwise go to waste, or occasionally has already been thrown away. The group exhibits a form of franchise activism.
Food loss and waste is food that is not eaten. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world's food is thrown away. A 2021 meta-analysis that did not include food lost during production, by the United Nations Environment Programme found that food waste was a challenge in all countries at all levels of economic development. The analysis estimated that global food waste was 931 million tonnes of food waste across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.
Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
Food waste in the United Kingdom is a subject of environmental, and socioeconomic concern that has received widespread media coverage and been met with varying responses from government. Since 1915, food waste has been identified as a considerable problem and has been the subject of ongoing media attention, intensifying with the launch of the "Love Food, Hate Waste" campaign in 2007. Food waste has been discussed in newspaper articles, news reports and television programmes, which have increased awareness of it as a public issue. To tackle waste issues, encompassing food waste, the government-funded "Waste & Resources Action Programme" (WRAP) was created in 2000.
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994, which aims at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
Gleaners, Inc., also known as The Volunteers Of Gleaners, is a Jackson, Mississippi-based non-profit organization founded by Gloria Martinson in 1986. It salvages food that otherwise would go to waste and redistributes it to other non-profit shelters in the metro area. Claude Mapp is the current CEO and Nancy Willis is the Director of Operations.
Food waste in New Zealand is one of the many environmental issues that is being addressed by industry, individuals and government.
Curb mining is the act of salvaging appliances, electronics, furniture and art discarded on the street ("curbside"). In cities around the world, people often dispose of furniture and other unwanted items by leaving them on the sidewalk for others to take.
Valentin Thurn is a German film maker, writer and director. He created the 2010 documentary Taste the Waste. He is also the co-founder of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.
Raphael Fellmer lived from 2010 until 2015 in a money strike, which started with a moneyless journey from The Netherlands to Mexico. He is an activist, who lived without money to raise awareness and makes use of surplus of the consumer society. To fight food waste, he created a foodsaving movement, a network which collected and shared more than 3 million kilogram of food. He is co-founder of foodsharing.de, where people can share their leftover food instead of throwing them away. In 2015 together with friends he founded yunity, a multi-sharing and saving platform.
Feeding Hong Kong is the first Hong Kong food bank dedicated to rescuing surplus food from retailers, distributors and manufacturers and redistributing it to people in need. They aim to fight hunger and reduce food waste in Hong Kong. It is an accredited member of The Global Food Banking Network.
Felix Project is a United Kingdom charitable organization that saves surplus food from suppliers and redistributes it to charities. It has the dual aim to help reduce food surplus. The Waste & Resources Action Programme estimate that 10 million tonnes of food was thrown away in the UK in 2016 and help relieve food poverty (Sustain estimate 18% or one in five London pupils are at risk of hunger every day.
Olio is a mobile app for sharing by giving away, getting, borrowing or lending things in your community for free, aiming to reduce household and food waste. It does this by connecting neighbours with spare food or household items to others nearby who wish to pick up those items. The food must be edible; it can be raw or cooked, sealed or open. Non-food items often listed on Olio include books, clothes and furniture.
412 Food Rescue is a nonprofit organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, dedicated to ending hunger by organizing volunteers to deliver surplus food to insecure communities instead of landfills. Since its creation in 2015, the organization has redistributed over three million pounds of food through the use of its mobile application, Food Rescue Hero. They are currently rolling out the app nationwide.
No Food Waste (NFW) is a movement turned NGO started by Padmanaban Gopalan and his friends Dinesh manickam and Sudhakar Mohan to get rid of the problem of hunger. The team of No Food Waste scouts for marriage halls, institutions and homes that might have excess food. The food is collected and then repackaged and distributed to the people in need. On an average, 600 plates of food were being provided daily as reported in 2017.
