Video Nation

Alf is part of the Freegan movement. One of the ways he and his friends survive is by living off food thrown out by supermarkets.

A free lunch?

It means they spend some evenings looking in dumpsters behind supermarkets for food that is discarded for a number of reasons. Often it is to make way for more produce that has been ordered by the shops. Sometimes the packaging is damaged or one item in a mulit-pack is broken and the supermarket will discard the lot. If food nearing or past its sell-by date, the supermarket fails to sell it and it too is thrown out.

They argue that 17 million tonnes of food gets thrown out each year and at least a quarter of that is within date and perfectly edible. Unless the Freegans get their hands on it first, it ends up in landfill sites across the country or is incinerated.

The Freegans believe this is one small way to highlight and tackle the wastefulness which is systematic within modern society.