No talking trash here: Students dive for dinner

November 25, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

Dumpster diving is far from a fad with UNC Charlotte students, but 20-year-old Kaitlyn Tokay and her friends say it’s catching on.

A self-described community activist, she began digging through grocery store trash bins in May and blogging on Facebook about the “perfectly good” food she found, cooked and ate.

It was meant to be a monthlong experiment, to expose society’s continued wastefulness, even in a recession.

But several months later, Tokay is still at it, only now, she’s part of a team.

As for her blog, readership is at 1,600 and growing.

“It has been an eye-opening experience to see not only what we throw away as a society, but how it can be used, with some imagination,” says Tokay, a junior majoring in communication studies.

Tokay and many other Dumpster divers consider themselves freegans, practicing a form of environmentalism based on minimal use of resources. Rescued food, hand-me-down clothes and found furniture are all part of the lifestyle.

Volunteerism is big, too, and Tokay does that by sharing her found food with the homeless, sometimes working with a program that serves meals on the streets of Charlotte.

Grocery stores maintain that the practice is a form of trespassing.

Grocery stores note that there are compelling reasons food is deemed unfit, including damage, exposure and being past its “sell by” date. Some store chains solve this dilemma by donating whatever they can save. Last year, Harris Teeter gave 539,000 pounds of food to Second Harvest Food Bank, store officials said.

Tokay and her peers realize they’re considered a nuisance, which is why they only come out at night, between midnight and 4 a.m. Most work in teams.

Tokay typically works with several people, including Stephanie Braun, 23, a social-work major who is also president of the UNCC Earth Club. Braun considers Dumpster diving a form of recycling and has been on outings with as many as four people.

Jacob Hanks, 22, is a recent UNCC grad who is among Tokay’s partners. He’s been at it longer, though, having started last year after hearing about it from a friend who had been Dumpster diving in Portland, Ore.

There have been occasions when he’s gone with as many as seven people, creating a kind of party atmosphere. And at least once, he ran into another team of students who were complete strangers.

“They came up after we were already there and joined in. We split everything,” says Hanks. He says he gets most of his meals these days from trash bins.

He says divers also tend to eat better, because they find fruits, vegetables and meats that struggling college students seldom can afford.

The USDA says the country has no universally accepted system for food dating. In fact, it says on its website that many products still should be safe after the sell-by date, if handled properly and kept at the recommended storage temperature of 40 degrees or below.

Tokay says she’s never gotten sick from eating items found in the trash.

Tokay says she learned frugality from her mom, Edna, who home-schooled all seven of her kids. “We grew up eating discounted food from various stores, and my mom grew a lot of our vegetables.”

Edna never Dumpster dived, though, and doesn’t plan to. However, she is not going to pass judgment.

“That’s a tricky question for a mother,” she says. “Kaitlyn is exuberant and high energy. She makes people tired just talking to them. My only advice to her is not to be alone, late at night. I want her to be safe.”

Tokay says she now goes four times a week and has gotten used to the feeling of watermelon and cottage cheese sliding down her pants legs, and rotten vegetables in her shoes.