Hmmm.
runs off to draft bill for Garbage and Recycling companies
I’m going to be RICH!
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On a different tangent, there actually is a public health aspect to this. Yes, the majority of food in a supermarket’s dumpsters is simply stuff that is about to ‘expire’ and is theoretically fine to eat, but it’s also where they toss food that they have to dispose of for other reasons. “Freegans die from Listeria” is not a headline you want the next time the supermarket disposes of a bunch of dodgy spinach.
Something tells me these individuals weren’t arrested because the grocery chain or police were just so gosh-darned concerned about their health.
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I like the part of the linked article that said the “stolen” items were returned to the grocery store. Presumably to be thrown immediately back into the dumpster.
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The individuals involved can be complete assholes without making it better or worse policy.
You sound very concerned, but I have never actually seen that headline.
Didn’t the internet used to have a word for this phenomenon? What was it again…?
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Heh-heh.
Look - this is clearly a public safety issue. The UK has been a model for years on how to best protect its citizens. It may be a little draconian at times, but it has the greater good in mind.
People don’t just throw away food for no reason. Something is wrong with it, making it unsellable, and most likely unsanitary. Even if it WAS perfectly fine, after being exposed to a filthy outdoor garbage bin, it has the potential to be contaminated with god knows what. Erring on the side of caution is going to reduce disease and death due to spoiled and contaminated foods. If it helps even one person a year, it is doing a worthwhile job and we should respect the law in that sense. The gov. is only trying to help us and keep us safe the best it knows how.
I find it absolutely fitting that they been charged under “an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.” The following characteristics of contemporary life: the disintegrating economy, the shrinking employment options for the poorer classes, the rise in the cost of food/living against sinking or stagnant wages, medical costs that bankrupt, ponzu schemes around construction and housing (popular in the London of the 1820s), and the increasing criminalization of the poor, I run across frequently in Victorian novels and non-fiction research work.
I also find analogs in German society during post-WWI inflation, and after the stock market crash of 1929. As the fellow said, “History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.” And I think the next stanza’s being written.
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Please tell me you are joking.
Food is thrown out everyday that is perfectly fit for human consumption. The problem for the supermarkets is it is past it’s sell by date so they can’t sell it, but they also don’t want to just give it away because they would regard that as a lost sale [insert piracy analogy here].
I personally hope this case is laughed out of court. It is an absolute waste of money and time.
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I’m reasonably sure that if a company could be proved to have known that they were disposing of listeria bearing comestibles into a skip out back, they’d be in for some pretty serious shit.
Unless of course they were too big to prosecute.
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What! For some other unfortunate to steal? That’s entrapment!
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I disagree. Dumpster diving should be a crime. From my experience people who dumpster dive just throw shit everywhere when they are done. This leaves the store or the apartment complex to clean up the mess. Additionally, there is the issue with dumpster diving for identity theft.
“we feel there is significant public interest in prosecuting these three individuals”
As a member of the public I’m more interested in why Iceland are throwing away perfectly good food when they could be using it to feed up a backyard pig. Once the pig is big enough they slaughter it, the staff douse themselves in the blood and dance naked around a bonfire. Obviously members of the Jewish and Muslim faith would be excused. Also, no fatties.
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Don’t know the local laws, but in Chicago the trash bins are stamped with the name of the hauler, who are the owners of the bins and everything inside. So for example, all individual homes have bins stamped with City of Chicago, which means the garbage in them is equivalent to the garbage in the open bins on street corners.
Not that I’d want someone coming onto my property to comb through my personal garbage, but I’m a person, not a company. And it’s completely normal for people to comb through the bins that are sitting out in alleys. At that point, they’re on public property too, so there’s no crime whatsoever.
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Just got to that bit in my first read of Pirate Cinema on the bus last night, and I did think “Damn that’s actually useful advice for those trying to survive, but I don’t reckon they’d let you do it if they caught you.”
Oh yes, that is exactly the line of thinking for the majority here in the U.S. Sick, huh?
I take it you’ve never shopped in an Iceland?
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It was the cakes wasn’t it?
I can see why the Crown Prosecution Service feels there is “significant public interest in prosecuting these three individuals”. Anyone stealing my old, dry, inedible sugar cakes should be locked up.
If they throw it away, it is already a lost sale. It gets written in the books they same way.
The reason they throw it out is due to liability. In our sue happy world, how many lawsuits for giving away dangerous, tainted food do you think a company can endure.
Throwing food away = no risk to them, not risk to public safety. Giving away possibly dodgy food only opens themselves to risk. Why would they do that?
