The Adlington Post

Perfectly edible food thrown into landfill..... I finally got around to editing some of the video I took last year. This short piece shows a tiny fraction of the waste from one supermarket otherwise headed for landfill in one day..... https://youtu.be/HUbbqAcYx1s

A recent dumpster dive netted a 350grm tub of (still chilled) chicken livers. A while ago while trash trawling I found a well-used copy of Leah W. Leonard's 1951 book of "Jewish Cookery" - on p. 301 is the recipie for molded chicken liver ( a firm favourite with my Jewish friends): "Combine broiled chicken livers, hard cooked eggs and greben. Run through food chopper, season to taste with salt, pepper, celery salt or garlic salt, add chicken or goose fat, or salad oil. Use as a canape spread.Top with tiny bits of pimento or green pepper, minced parsley or water cress, or stuffed olive.
Or press into a well-greased mold. Unmold on shredded greens and garnish." OR on p. 382 Leah gives the recipie for "Chopped Liver and Peanut Butter"!: "Two parts chopped liver to 1 part peanut butter makes a delicious spread".

Evening freegan finds continue at the back door of my local supermarket. The other night was cheese night, all packages perfectly OK and well before their use-by dates.

On Sunday on my way home from a walk on the beach I spotted an almost empty Council pre-paid garbage bag protruding from a trash can. As I have an old carpet to go out i salvaged the bag. When I got it home I found that the contents were a very fresh, and still-chilled snapper. I cooked it wrapped in tin-foil & it was delicious!

Here is the meat haul mentioned in the Sunday Star Times article (below) the other week - this is my pile, I gave as much again away! stacked in the freezer

On Sunday 31 March the Sunday Star Times here in Auckland published an article on the tremendous waste of perfectly good food worldwide - and included an interview with myself: photo by Lawrence Smith/FairfaxNZ Diary of a Well-fed Freegan 0ne man's Waste is another’s dinner, and it’s not just about dumpster diving, writes Shabnam Dastgheib. AFTER SEVEN years of not paying for food, tools or art supplies, 63-year-old Martin Adlington has freeganism down to a fine art. He finds wine, biscuits, eggs, cheese, and bread and dips in a typical haul from a typical dive in a typical supermarket dumpster. He goes only when he feels like it and often finds enough to donate to large, hungry families in Auckland. This month, World Bank senior economist Jose Cuesta targeted retailers and consumers to find a solution to the world’s staggering food waste. A United Nations- backed campaign Think Eat Save estimates that in industrialized nations 300 million tonnes of food fit for consumption i...

Looks like bacon'n'eggs for me for the next week or so - I found six packets of bacon & a tray of 24 eggs in the skip last night (gave half to my neighbour). Check out the "best before" date on the middle bacon = 1 May 2014!

Last night was busy down at the skip - I hauled home some $200 worth of groceries, and had to make two trips....most of the packets were before their "buy by" date, and one of the 4 trays of eggs had been dumped because ONE egg was broken! I noticed that someone has taken up after-dark occupation in one of the paper cages nearby - under the eaves and so out of the winter rain...he was munching on a bagel from the skip as I went past....hopefully he  will not draw the attention of the supermarket jocks & lead to them putting a lock on the skip....

Here's last night's find while out dumpsterdiving & trash trawling. A rounded meal, as my friend Laurie says: "Gotcha protein, gotcha carbs, gotcha greens" - & a piece of fruit for desert!

A recent freeganing trip netted a 350grm tub of (still chilled) chicken livers.  A while ago while trash trawling I found a well-used copy of Leah W. Leonard's 1951 book of "Jewish Cookery" on p. 301 is the recipie for molded chicken liver ( a firm favourite with my Jewish friends): "Combine broiled chicken livers,hard cooked eggs and greben. Run through food chopper, season to taste with salt, pepper, celery salt or garlic salt, add chicken or goose fat, or salad oil. Use as a canape spread.Top with tiny bits of pimento or green pepper, minced parsley or water cress, or stuffed olive. Or press into a well-greased mold. Unmold on shredded greens and garnish." OR on p. 382 Leah gives the recipie for "Chopped Liver and Peanut Butter"!: "Two parts chopped liver to 1 part peanut butter makes a delicious spread".

A friend has groceries delivered weekly from the supermarket. When the delivery arrives, last week's veges get thrown away. We brought these home last night: mushrooms, apricots, an avocado, a pack of celery, & some spring onions. For more of my dumpster diving, freeganing & trash trawling adventures see my blog trashzilla

Let the Hunger Games Begin Celsias.co.nz reports: "The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions.  This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains. This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict. In 2008 a similar scenario led to “food riots” in more than two dozen countries, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Senegal, and Yemen. In 2010 a surge in food prices resulted in widespread social unrest, t...

On one of my foraging expeditions I found this packaged food dumped in my locality. Judging by evidence from the other trash at the site, some students had moved out & saw fit to dump their "rubbish" in a car park. We have 12 x soy sauce, a Hershey's chocolate sauce, 10x miso soups, noodles, and three packets of noodle soups - lunches for me for several days...thanks guys.

The other night I found these two fresh and entirely edible loaves of bread in a skip. It is interesting to note that some 30% of the food produced in NZ goes to waste/landfill - this when many people in this country are going hungry. Let's call a spade a xxxing shovel here - the major food retailers are not interested in anything else but their "bottom line" and the interests of their shareholders. Shame on them.

As told to Paula Trubshaw & photographed by Kristina Rapley - thanks guys for a great job! The amended text reads:  Sneaking under the cover of the fence, I raced across to the Hobsonville Air force base rubbish dump. "Wow, check out this old ammunition box!" I exclaimed, hauling it out of the pile and showing it to my five-year old friends. Growing up close to the base in Auckland in the 1950's we were strictly forbidden to go near the dump - so of course we visited it as often as we could. It was full of the kind of treasures boys of my age dreamed about, and was the start of my lifelong interest in other people's junk. Moving to Wellington when I was 20, I got a job driving a rubbish truck. Within three months I'd outfitted my flat from floor to ceiling with the things other people tossed away: goat-skin rugs, a full set of cast-iron frying pans, and an old-fashioned typewriter were just some of the useful items that I rescued from the trash....

"The motto is reduce, reuse and recycle but nobody's reducing" - martin adlington "Members of a fringe group known as dumpster divers are enjoying fancy meals – for free. On an average evening they can be found knee-deep in supermarket skips collecting food, despite most being able to pay for it off the shelves. Former rubbish truck driver and self-proclaimed professor of garbology Martin Adlington says people like him are dumpster divers out of principle. "On the Shore what is thrown out by supermarkets, veggie shops and restaurants you can live off very well. I've found stuff where the expiry date isn't for another month." One of his most successful yields includes bacon, salami, yoghurt, cream cheese dip and blue vein cheese barely past the use-by date and still cold from the chiller. "If you know the right times and places to go you do pretty well." see the rest of the article, plus some intern...

Last week a reporter from our local North Shore Times came to my home to interview me on matters regarding freganing & dumpster diving. Between 30-40% of the food produced in NZ is wasted at some point on the food chain. The reporter asked me if a family of four could live from the food disposed of in local dumpsters - "easily" I replied - they would probably even thrive on all the fruit & vegetables disposed of because of a slight blemish or (horror!) odd shape.

Last night I on my evening trash patrol I found these packets of bacon, still chilled in the skip behind the local supermarket. Date expired 29th September - bacon butties are on me!!