Food For Thought
Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert’s Dive! Living Off America’s Waste.
Written by Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Life
Rule number two is more straightforward: “First one to the dumpster has first dibs, but sharing is mandatory.”
And rule number three prescribes “leaving the dumpster [and surrounding area] cleaner than you found it,” which at first seems counter-intuitive, considering that it’s a dumpster. The rationale is to avoid giving store owners a reason to put a padlock on their trash. “If I worked at a store and night creatures came and made a mess of my dumpsters, I’d start locking them too. Nobody wants to clean that up,” reminds Seifert.
As for the risks involved with eating out of the trash, Seifert urges individuals to make like Toucan Sam, the avian mascot of Kellogg’s Froot Loops: Follow your nose, it always knows. “You can really trust your sense of smell. I’ve never been sick from eating dumpster food, and no one I know has ever gotten sick,” he says, before noting that one of his friends did get food poisoning—from a restaurant—during a period when he was routinely getting his meals from dumpsters.
If the critical response to Dive! is any indication, many more Americans will soon be following Seifert’s crew into dumpsters all over the country. Completed in August 2009 (Budget: $200), Dive! has already won five “best of” film festival awards, including the Boulder International Film Festival’s “Best Call 2 Action Film.”
Even more encouraging is the fact that nonprofits like Feeding America—one of the nation’s largest charitable hunger-relief organizations—have been making significant headway in the fight against hunger. In November 2008, Feeding America partnered with Walmart, which is now donating leftover produce, deli meat, beef, chicken, dairy and other groceries from Sam’s Clubs, Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets nationwide. “If Walmart—of all places—will get involved at the corporate level, we can use that to shame companies like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s,” suggests Seifert.
Ironically, after completing Dive!, Seifert says he felt compelled to cut back on his dumpster diving, and also developed an aversion to food. “When I finished the film [in August 2009] I was so sick of food that I didn’t even want to think about it. I just wanted a bowl of oatmeal twice a day,” he says, a hint of disgust still lingering in his voice.
But in the months since, Seifert has begun to “connect with the earth,” having planted a garden with his son Finn, where he is growing cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, and watermelons. At the same time, he continues to work towards wasting as little food as humanly possible. “I’m hypersensitive about food waste, but I’m also a product of my culture and place,” he acknowledges. “I know I still waste food at times and it pains me deeply.”
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