For the past 4 years, a woman in Denmark has been living off discarded food found in garbage bins, never having to buy groceries from a supermarket. This frugal lifestyle has allowed her to save a considerable amount of money, which she has used to travel abroad. Apart from showcasing this woman’s money-saving skills, this story also highlights the issue of food waste.
According to the report by the South West News Service in the UK, the woman named Sofie Juel-Anderson started dumpster diving, which involves scavenging through trash for usable items, in October 2020 when she was living in Sydney, Australia.
She discovered a lot of food in the trash bins, some of which were expired, but many were still perfectly fine. She realized that there were so many “delicious things” in the garbage bins.
She said, “For me, it’s like a treasure hunt. I quickly realized there were so many tasty things in the trash bins that I didn’t need to go shopping anymore.”
In 2022, Juel-Anderson moved back to Denmark. Despite working as a restaurant manager, she continues to collect food from garbage bins, saving thousands of dollars in food expenses each year.
At the age of 30, Juel-Anderson checked her expenses for 2024 and found that she only spent $99 at supermarkets the entire year. This money was used for non-food essentials like toiletries and toothpaste.
She mentioned that she doesn’t have a set schedule for dumpster diving. She might go a few times a week or every two weeks. Each time, she returns home with loads of food, and her fridge is always full.
She noted that dumpster diving has allowed her to save money for traveling, visiting friends around the world, and reducing her work hours to three days a week, giving her a sense of unprecedented freedom.
In the past 4 years, she has traveled to Kenya, Argentina, Italy, Spain, and Dubai.
She expressed her love for dumpster diving, even getting her parents, grandparents, and siblings involved. Her friends and family are aware that all her food comes from trash bins.
She said, “They know the food is good because I wouldn’t feed my guests anything I wouldn’t eat myself. I assess the food before picking it up.”
She also wants to raise awareness about food waste and how people perceive food. Even if food is expired or slightly damaged, it is still edible.
Juel-Anderson is not the first person to survive on discarded food from trash bins.
In a report by Da Ji Yuan in 2016, a graduate student in Washington, D.C., found that supermarkets often throw away expired food, so he would search through supermarket trash bins for his daily meals. Over the past two years, he spent only $5.5 on food. He hopes to remind people to cherish food more.