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grocery stores

Heroes

Woman who gets all her food from supermarket dumpsters only spends $100 a year on groceries

"I've only been sick one time because I ate a bad apple."

via Vanessa Hernandez/Flickr

An abundance of food taken from a dumpster.

In the United States, we have two big problems that should help solve each other, but unfortunately, the problems persist. According to the USDA, it's estimated that between 30 to 40% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted. So, wholesome food that could help feed families instead winds up in landfills. At the same time, about 18 million households, or 13.5% of the population, are food insecure.

Five years ago, Sofie Juel-Andersen, 30, of Denmark, who was living in Sydney, Australia, was told by her sister that she could save a lot of money and prevent food from being wasted by diving into dumpsters at her local supermarket. Initially, Juel-Andersen was skeptical about her sister’s idea. “My sister sent me a photo of some hidden treasures she’d found dumpster diving. I knew about it, but I’d never seen it as an option to put food on the table,” she told SWNS.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

After Juel-Andersen made a few successful hauls and saw the amount of money she was saving, she was hooked. “What I found was insane. It was filled with food—some of it had expired, but a lot hadn’t,” she said. “It was like a treasure hunt for me. I quickly realized that there was so much good food in the dumpsters I didn’t need to go shopping anymore.”

After moving back to Denmark in 2022, she continued dumpster diving and has been so successful that she hardly ever has to shop at the grocery store. She estimates she only spent $100 in supermarkets in 2024, primarily on toiletries such as toilet paper and toothpaste. This allowed the restaurant manager to have a lot more money for traveling.

Her success as a dumpster diver has made her popular on TikTok, where she can share an important message about food waste.


Why do grocery stores throw out good food?

Why are grocery stores throwing away so much good food? “I believe grocery stores throw out food because of the following reasons; the first is there's a small mark on the product or it's in a bag where one item is rotten,” she told Newsweek. “The second is they have a new shipment of a product, so they throw away the old ones which are closer to their sell-by or best-before dates. Thirdly, grocery stores may get rid of one product in a large container where another has been damaged.”

So how does Juel-Andersen avoid getting sick eating food she finds in dumpsters, a lot of it close to or past its expiration dates? "My main source of food is food from the dumpsters, and I've only been sick one time because I ate a bad apple,” she shared on TikTok. “Which was completely my own fault." She added that she avoids eating food that is "moldy, looks bad, or smells bad. I am very cautious of what I take."

Even though dumpster diving should never be the solution to the problems of food waste and insecurity, Juel-Andersen’s brave and creative approach to the problem has inspired an important discussion about sustainability and resourcefulness. Let’s hope that in the future, we can bridge the gap between surplus and need so no food is wasted, and no one goes hungry.

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food
Sustainability

Canadian IGA grocery store sells organic produce and honey from its own rooftop garden

IGA/YouTube

Rooftop gardens have become popular features of high rise apartments, but a grocery store in Canada has taken the idea a big step further.

According to Canadian Grocer, the 25,000 square foot rooftop garden of IGA Extra Famille Duchemin grocery store, created in 2017 in Montreal, produces about 35 types of produce that the store harvests and sells themselves. The certified organic crops include kale, lettuce, carrots, green beans, eggplant, garlic, tomatoes and spinach, and store co-owner Richard Duchemin says the produce sells "very well." The garden also includes beehives for honey.

The garden is even designed in the shape of the letters IGA, making quite a striking visual from the air. Duchemin told the Montreal Gazette that he hoped his store's rooftop would serve as an example for other grocery stores to follow.

"Why don't supermarkets plant vegetables on their roofs? Some restaurants have little boxes where they grow herbs," he said. "We pushed it further because we know we're able to sell what we produce here."

Check it out:

IGA - Frais du toityoutu.be

The garden isn't just green with plants; it's also environmentally maintained, getting its irrigation water from the store's dehumidification system—water which would have been discarded anyway. The lush outdoor space also serves as a habitat for birds and bees.

This hyperlocal approach to farming can also reduce the environmental and economic costs of transporting produce. Though the rooftop garden can't serve all demand for produce, especially in a region with a limited growing season, it does help. And how fresh would your produce be if it was literally just picked an hour or two ago?

"People are very interested in buying local," Duchemin told the Gazette. "There's nothing more local than this."

Good News Movement shared a photo of the rooftop garden on Instagram, and people are loving it.

The Instagram post quoted Duchemin, saying,"Not only does a green roof help regulate the temperature of the building below it, saving energy, but it also feeds into consumer demand for food with a smaller carbon footprint."

Wouldn't it be incredible if every grocery store grew its own produce on site? Is this a glimpse of the future?

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environment
Planet

Greenpeace just named the best and worst grocery stores for the planet.

Since plastic was first invented in 1907, over 8.3 billion tons has been produced, of which 79% has either wound up in a landfill or the natural environment.

About a third of this plastic are single-use products such as straws, cutlery, and shopping bags. Plastic bags now kill over 1000,000 marine animals a year and the Great Pacific garbage patch has grown past 1.6 million square kilometers.

Unfortunately, plastic production on Earth is showing no signs of slowing. According to The Guardian, plastic production is set to skyrocket over the next 10 to 15 years, with over 360 million tons produced in 2018 alone.

One way we can work to decrease the amount of plastic produced is to change how and where we shop. Greenpeace has taken the lead by ranking 20 of America's top supermarket chains in terms of how they're fighting the plastic crisis.

Unfortunately the news hasn't been positive. Across the board, "U.S. supermarkets are failing to adequately address the plastic pollution crisis they are contributing to," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Grocery retailers across the country sell obscene amounts of products in throwaway plastics every single day, yet none of them are acting with the urgency needed to address the pollution crisis they're causing," Greenpeace Plastics Campaigner David Pinsky said in a statement.

"Not only do these companies have the resources to reimagine their stores with refill and reuse systems, they can use their buying power to pressure consumer goods companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Unilever to act as well," Pinsky continued. "The question is whether retailers will take responsibility for this mess, and act."

The supermarkets were ranked on a scale of 1 to 100, and the top performer, Aldi, received just a 34.6. Aldi achieved a top score by instituting several initiatives that most others do not: a specific plastic reduction target, a more comprehensive plastic reduction plan, greater transparency, and commitments to implement reuse and refill systems.

Here are the top and bottom 5 supermarkets according to Greenpeace.

Top 5:

1. Aldi

2. Kroger

3. Albertsons

4. Trader Joe's

5. Sprouts

Bottom 5:

16. Giant Eagle

17. WinCo Foods

18: Meijer

19. Wakefern

20. H.E.B.

Greenpeace doesn't just want to prompt supermarkets into taking action, it believes that's our job as well.

After learning about your local store's record, it asks you to take the scorecard to your supermarket to show the store's ranking to the store manager. Greenpeace also asks you tell the manager that "customers want to see less single-use plastics and more refill and reuse options."

Greenpeace also suggests you take photos of ridiculous single-use plastic packaging and post it on social media at #BreakFreeFromPlastic.


Even if our local supermarket isn't doing all it can to reduce its plastic footprint, we can all improve by shopping with reusable bags, purchasing loose fruit and vegetables, and shopping at farmers' markets when possible.

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Heroes

A food bank volunteer and her coder friend figured out how to feed thousands of people.

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Starbucks Upstanders

Anyone can have a good idea, but it takes a special person to follow through. Maria Rose Belding is one of those people.

While volunteering at a food pantry, Maria Rose noticed that huge amounts of good food were being tossed out at the end of every day. The food pantry couldn’t share those resources with neighboring towns because — even in the internet age — it was incredibly difficult to get hold of the necessary people in order to do so. Maria Rose was only in the eighth grade, but this flawed system didn’t sit well with her.

Years later, she found herself in a position to do something about it. Take a look:

You see, we have enough food in this country to feed everyone. Still, there are about 49 million Americans who are food insecure.

"If we had a crisis that was affecting one in six Americans, that was strongly associated with not finishing high school, with not going to college. That was strongly associated with bad health outcomes, with mortality, with incarceration, with behavioral health issues. If we had a crisis that was doing that to one in six of us, we would be freaking out," Maria said.

"And that’s exactly what hunger is. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be quick, but we can fix this. And we should."

All images via Starbucks. Used with permission.

She points out that the effects of food insecurity — not being able to rely on access to affordable and nutritious foods — go far beyond an individual’s health.

"You can’t strategize about getting a job, about finding higher-paying employment, about continuing your education, about taking care of your kids. You can’t think about any of those things if you haven’t eaten anything today," she said.

Knowing how deeply the food was needed and then watching surplus donated food get thrown away was mind-blowing to Maria Rose. She knew there had to be a better way.

Maria Rose enlisted her coder friend Grant Nelson to help her build a nationwide database for food banks: MEANS.

The premise is simple: Food pantries and restaurants — really, all places with extra food — indicate in the database excess food that they have available. Nonprofits in the area are alerted via text or email and are able to go pick up the much-needed food and get it to hungry people.

What’s incredible is that Maria Rose saw a problem and figured out a way to do something about it. Her actions transformed the way food banks are able to communicate with the rest of the community. MEANS makes it possible for so many more people to eat — a basic necessity and human right.  

Today, MEANS works with over 800 organizations in 45 states.

Thousands of pounds of food that would have otherwise been trashed are being redistributed every month thanks to MEANS.

A single person had an idea and acted on it and revolutionized a process that has a direct effect on so many people’s lives. It started with her deciding to take action. Imagine what else we can accomplish.

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