"Dive!" into a moving account of local hunger and food waste
The film "Dive!" is not likely to "go viral" on the Internet. It won't go viral on YouTube or other video sites because it's 45 minutes long and tells a story without publicly embarrassing anyone. What the film does is challenge people to look at food waste in a calm, humorous, and factual way -- not a recipe for developing quick, large audiences fed on celebrity mishaps. However it's clearly seeking an audience of people concerned about problems of hunger and poverty in our communities.
The screening of the film took place in Kansas City on April 17, 2010 as part of the KC Film Fest and drew a full house of 75 people. Like a lot of videos developed today it was made on a shoestring budget of $200 but the territory and message cover a much larger vision.
The filmmakers juxtapose images of hunger with the mountains of food waste discarded everyday. The central focus of the film is waste by grocery store chains in the Los Angeles area. Their compassion for reducing waste revolves around the large US population that goes hungry or are "food insecure" as a Bread for the World worker mentioned in the film. The economic downtown and food crisis in 2008 drastically increased people seeking food assistance as indicated in the sharp increase in Food Stamp applications. Harvesters heard Kansas City area pantries and soup kitchens report a 40% increase in people seeking food.
The characters in the film clearly have thought a lot about hunger, given the effort they took to reach out to grocery store managers, talk with workers at LA Regional Food Bank, God Provides Food Bank, Center for the Working Poor, conduct research about food waste and hunger, as well as advocate for changing store policies.
They boiled dumpster diving down to simple terms: 1) never take more than you need, 2) first dibs, but be sure to share with others, and 3) leave the dumpster cleaner than you found it.
They answer questions that people would ask about the safety of food requiring refrigeration such as meat and eggs, though I'm not convinced that eating meat and eggs left at room temperature for an extended period of time is safe.
The film shares the friendly social circle that recovers the food and cooks it for personal consumption, highlighting the work involved to prepare extra food for freezer storage. Twenty percent of waste disposed in landfills is food, indicating that Americans at all points of the food chain -- production, transportation, prepartion, distribution, and consumption -- participate in excessive consumption.
In a revealing segment the filmmakers show how grocery stores disposed of products in advance of a planned store closure around Christmas. In one of the rare times of store manager approval, the dumpster divers retrieve large quantities of food from the stores, promising to share the recovered products with area food banks. To be fair to grocery stores that universally refused to talk to the filmmakers about their food disposal policies, the film acknowledges signficant grocery store donations in part because of the Good Samitarian Act [PDF] of the Clinton Administration.
As a food bank worker at Harvesters in Kansas City, I have found that indispensable food donors include grocery wholesales, producers, and distributors like Sams Club. And because of the increased food prices and economic crisis, grocers and producers have said they seek to reduce waste to maintain profitability as I learned at a food bank conference in 2008. "Dive!" makes a strong case -- despite the high cost of disposing food -- that grocers find it easier to dispose than share even more with food banks and people needing food assistance.
The film covers the wide landscape of food waste, providing viewers with important facts at times, though the gravity of the film is maintained through the late night grocery store visits and narration about waste and hunger.
While the film confronts corporate leaders it does so to embellish its story about waste throughout the food chain. The film seeks to challenge everyone to waste less, or give more. They highlight one creative program in grocery chain Albertson's "Fresh Rescue" program that increases donations of perishable products to charities and food banks.
In the end the film is funny and intelligent and challenges all of us to value the Earth more and to overcome a "public will not strong enough" to provide for the increasing numbers of working poor people in the US.
The screening of the film took place in Kansas City on April 17, 2010 as part of the KC Film Fest and drew a full house of 75 people. Like a lot of videos developed today it was made on a shoestring budget of $200 but the territory and message cover a much larger vision.
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| Sifting food in dumpster (from Dive! The Film) |
The characters in the film clearly have thought a lot about hunger, given the effort they took to reach out to grocery store managers, talk with workers at LA Regional Food Bank, God Provides Food Bank, Center for the Working Poor, conduct research about food waste and hunger, as well as advocate for changing store policies.
They boiled dumpster diving down to simple terms: 1) never take more than you need, 2) first dibs, but be sure to share with others, and 3) leave the dumpster cleaner than you found it.
They answer questions that people would ask about the safety of food requiring refrigeration such as meat and eggs, though I'm not convinced that eating meat and eggs left at room temperature for an extended period of time is safe.
The film shares the friendly social circle that recovers the food and cooks it for personal consumption, highlighting the work involved to prepare extra food for freezer storage. Twenty percent of waste disposed in landfills is food, indicating that Americans at all points of the food chain -- production, transportation, prepartion, distribution, and consumption -- participate in excessive consumption.
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| Examples of products recovered from grocery store dumpsters. Characters in the film prepared meals with gourmet and organic food items (photo from Dive! web site) |
As a food bank worker at Harvesters in Kansas City, I have found that indispensable food donors include grocery wholesales, producers, and distributors like Sams Club. And because of the increased food prices and economic crisis, grocers and producers have said they seek to reduce waste to maintain profitability as I learned at a food bank conference in 2008. "Dive!" makes a strong case -- despite the high cost of disposing food -- that grocers find it easier to dispose than share even more with food banks and people needing food assistance.
The film covers the wide landscape of food waste, providing viewers with important facts at times, though the gravity of the film is maintained through the late night grocery store visits and narration about waste and hunger.
While the film confronts corporate leaders it does so to embellish its story about waste throughout the food chain. The film seeks to challenge everyone to waste less, or give more. They highlight one creative program in grocery chain Albertson's "Fresh Rescue" program that increases donations of perishable products to charities and food banks.
In the end the film is funny and intelligent and challenges all of us to value the Earth more and to overcome a "public will not strong enough" to provide for the increasing numbers of working poor people in the US.
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