Free Christmas dinner - which has come from the bin

Roast potatoes with rosemary, a turkey joint, mounds of vegetables, gravy, stuffing, cakes, canapes, wine and soft drinks are all set to be on the menu.

But the meal won’t break her bank – in fact it won’t cost her a penny.

She is one of a growing number of so called freegans, who avoid buying food and other products as much as possible.

Instead she finds things in supermarket bins, collects and distributed unwanted food from shops and restaurants, and swaps items.

It is worth noting that food in bins still belongs to the shops who have thrown it out, although none of Libby and her friends have been in trouble for ‘bin diving’ or ‘binning’, as taking useable items from shop bins is known.

She is also a member of Curb, the Southampton branch of The Real Junk Food Project, a national food waste campaign which intercepts tonnes of food which would end up in landfill and redistributes it.

This is done with pop up cafes.

One is being held tomorrow evening from 5-8pm at Espresso City in East Street, Southampton, called Feast Street, with people being invited to ‘pay as you feel’ for what they eat, rather than being charged a set price, to help encourage them to think about the value of food.

It is also distributed on Mondays from Tiger Yard in East Street, with a weekly ‘food boutique’, where people can collect their weekly groceries, donating what they want to, either as money or by volunteering their services to the project.

It would be easy to think that being a freegan would mean living a meagre existence and going without, but Louiza Hamidi, Libby’s flatmate and fellow Curb organiser, says that once you enter the world of waste, there is more than you know what to do with.

In fact, she is now volunteering for Curb full time, in order to set up a permanent food waste cafe.

“People say ‘now are you going to run a full-time cafe with waste?’, but actually, once you get into it, there’s an abundance of food. Southampton needs about ten food waste cafes!”

Tomorrow’s pop up Food Waste Cafe will give people a chance to get a flavour of what seasonal freegan food can be.

Louiza hopes it will help people to think about where their food comes from, just how much is wasted, and how they can make a difference.

As well as offering cooked food, there will be food that people can take home, perhaps to add a freegan element to their own Christmas dinner.

“When we hold Food Waste Cafes, a lot of people are shocked, not just that the food came out of a bin, but that it went into one in the first place,” says Libby.

She will be joining her family for Christmas this year, and has encouraged them to delay buying any food until she lets them know what free food she will be bringing.

“There is an element of uncertainty,” explains Libby, who shares a city centre flat with Louiza and their friend and fellow freegan and Curb volunteer, Thistle Prince.

“You can’t say ‘I’ll definitely have that this year’, but there isn’t much we haven’t found, especially in terms of things you’d eat as a main meal, so it’s not really restrictive.

“It doesn’t take long to find so much food that you’re like ‘what shall I do with it?’ “One night of binning might not provide the variety you might want, but it definitely provides the quantity.”

Thistle adds that recently she went to a freegan Christmas dinner, which, far from being meagre, was a feast.

“Everything there was from the bins of just one supermarket,” she says.

“There were around ten bottles of Prosecco, a big meat pie, a roast joint, roast potatoes and all the rest for around 25 people!”

The women say that there are a number levels of food waste, from what is ploughed back into the land because supermarkets don’t consider it to be attractive enough to be sold, through big stores over-stocking their shelves and throwing food away when the next order comes in, to consumers wasting food at home.

“We’re just dealing with the tip of the iceberg – not even that,” says Louiza.

“This isn’t a solution to the problem. I think the solution is to be more aware of the value of food. If, as a planet, we respected food, I don’t think we would waste it. We would stop thinking that all parsnips have to be exactly straight.”

She adds that the aim of Curb is to cease to be necessary.

“As freegans, we’re dependant on capitalism and consumerism, because we’re taking their waste.”

“If they didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be living this way, but that’s the point.”

“With Curb, our business model is to put ourselves out of business.

“We don’t want to be going round picking up people’s food waste – we don’t want that to be a problem. But while it is, that’s what we’re doing.”

• For more information about Curb, see Curb: The Real Junk Food Project Southampton, email curbkitchen@hotmail.co.uk, visit curbkitchen.wordpress.com or call 07941429723.

For Louisa, Libby and Thistle, their freegan Christmasses go beyond eating ‘waste’ food.

“I try not to buy gifts. If I do, I’ll buy it from somewhere socially responsible, like Tiger Yard, or it will be second hand, come out of a bin, or I’ll make it. This year I’m knitting socks with freegan wool that someone gave away on Freecycle because they didn’t want it anymore, says Libby.

Thistle is also making gifts, while Louiza says her family have never been into the commercial side of Christmas.

“There’s no pressure to buy anything, and everyone knows if I do bring anything home, I’ll have sourced it with no money,” she says.

Louiza adds that being a freegan helps develop a sense of community, not only through giving food away to friends, neighbours and strangers, but also through being part of a network of people who give things away and lend them, to avoid creating unnecessary waste.

“There’s a really good network of people sharing things in Southampton, so that saves people from buying new things and also helps connect the community,” she says.

“There are lots of ways people in the area can share stuff and avoid throwing things away, or spending more money on things, through Facebook groups and things like Freecycle.

“I lived in Plymouth for a while and there was nothing there. Southampton is really good for it – we’re really lucky here.”

The women agree that the high street feels very stressful and high pressured in the run up to Christmas and feel that Christmas has become hugely over-commercialised.

“I find the high street quite stressful at this time of year,” says Thistle.

“It doesn’t feel like a positive environment and it isn’t good for anyone.

“Everyone seems to be complaining about each other. Christmas is supposed to be about being together and enjoying yourself, but the lead up is so full of stress and ‘I’ve got to buy this’ and pushing other people out of the way.”

Libby adds: “A lot of people seem to hate Christmas because it’s about consumerism. I’m not into consumerism, but I love Christmas. I think you can have a different sort of Christmas – that’s what we’re doing.”