saving those little fishes

My food scavenging experiences have largely been limited, in the past few months, to salvaging packed sandwiches and salads from their black plastic bin-liner coffins, left outside the cafes chains. For a student living on a shoestring and engaged with a battle with the phd-moloch, this is a reasonable way to fill your stomach, save money and time. However I hate living on sandwiches. The bread of these triangle shaped specimens is labeled 'malted brown' or 'multi-grain' or something to make it sound healthy, but it's cheap and crappy bread to begin with, and would not last more than a few hours after the sandwich was made. So I have devised a new way to salvage these wasted items. With salmon, roastbeef, chorizo sandwiches etc, I discard the bread as soon as I can and keep the meat or fish to serve in breakfast, or to make my own sandwiches.

I am not vegetarian. I would prefer to be one, but I enjoy eating meat and fish. I am not even a freegan - though the term freeganism is often used liberally to describe any dumpster-happy comrade, strictly speaking it refers to Vegans who allow themselves animal products when they find them and not have to pay for them; and I do buy meat and fish occasionally.

Yet there is something that strikes me as especially horrible in throwing good meat and fish away. A fellow scavenger I recently met in college put it into words. "You may think it is alright to kill animals in order to eat them. But killing a living creature, just to throw its meat away? What kind of a senseless cruelety is that? How can you possibly justify it?"

another day

For some days now I've been thinking about getting Wellington rubber boots. There is a big puddle outside the front door - the drains seem to be blocked - and Wellies could help if I wanted to do something about it. Yesterday I found a pair in the street on the way home. Somebody left them next to the parking metre. As if they had come to pay for parking and then vanished into thin air.

(empty shoes always look like someone just took them off, said f. There is something indexical about shoes).

I looked around to see if the boots related to something particular, but could find nothing except people walking past busily and the random groupings of students outside college doors. I put my foot inside one boot; there was sand at its bottom. My size: reclaimed.

Later, closer to home, we checked the bins of the French patisserie on the green. I never had luck there but yesterday, success: long thin baguettes. As I closed the binliners, a man approached us, turning his head from side to side erratically: maybe you have 30p, 10p coin, I need to make a phone call. His eyes were twitching, and his manner suggested crack. No money I said, but you can find some nice bread in there, and pointed at the binliner. "What!" he exclaimed, and hurried off, shouting-murmuring, waving his hands: "Arseholes. Idiots. SCUM! Taking food from the rubbish! SCUM!"

Green Lies

A rummage through the rubbish is not only a good way to find food, but also to learn the truth behind the green promises of supermarkets and food chains:

"Bag for life" - offered by supermarkets as a durable plastic bag, which is replaced free and recycled when worn out. But you see, plastic is such a pain to recycle; a much easier solution is to throw them into the skip, where I sometimes found dozens of those sad bags, doomed for life under mountains of rubbish in a landfill.

"Hand made in our kitchen, freshly every day" this is the promise of the quality sandwich and salad chains, stamped on all their wrappings and shop-windows. Well, if you imagine young chefs lovingly slicing roast beef, tearing lettuce leaves and cooking soups, have a look through their bin bags. You will find plastic packs and containers of ready made ingredients: everything arrives to the shop already washed, chopped and prepared in advance. I think "assembled in our kitchen" is more appropriate.

"Everything is made today and what we don't sell, we offer to charity" - perhaps some of it does make it to charities. But enough remains that could feed small towns. The amounts of food that these chains of gourmet cafes are throwing in their binliners will make you throw up.

more on the lack of fridges

Yesterday, as I was cycling to Hackney, I thought again about life without a fridge. When I lived in Vauxhall four years ago, I spent the whole spring (March to June) without electricity and somehow the impossibility of food refrigeration was not an issue. So why is it such a big problem now? These are my conclusions:

1. Global warming: this spring is considerably hotter. April felt more like July. Things go off more quickly.

2. Communal living: I lived in Vauxhall with four other housemates (now we are only two); we all cooked for each other regularly and ate in the house. So we would go through cooked food in a day or two. Often when I got home from the library there was food waiting fo me. Now I mainly cook for myself: much more time consuming.

3. Simpler packed lunches : at the time I was skipping bagels regularly from a bagel shop in Covent garden. Lunch usually consisted of two bagels with some filling (fried tofu, tahini and carrots.. etc). It was simple to make. I no longer find bagels there - it seems like they stopped leaving them out, and in case I would not like to eat bread so often.

Skipping appliances - the anti-consumer beginner's Guide

What can you expect?
The streets of London are awash with discarded appliances, and most of them either work or can be easily fixed. It seems that people throw them away for a range of reasons - disfunctionality isn't the main one. More specifically:

• Printers - I see them on the streets all the time and they usually work. But if you don't need one or can't be bothered carrying it home, look in the paper comparment. It's almost always full with A4 paper.
• Vaccum Cleaners - never work. I've stopped trying long ago .
• Computer screens - always work. But who needs them?
• Fridges, washing machines, stoves.... mixed record of success. My skipping algorythm for these appliances: multiply necessity by distance then divide by housemates willing to carry the load. Allow colour to influence your decision.

Where's best to look?
Anywhere in London. More stuff appears in middle class areas but it's not unusual to find various treasures near estates in working class areas. Really posh areas, like the docklands, are the worst: everywhere is gated and fenced off and you have no chance of getting near the bins of plenty.

Carrying the load
Just put it on the back rack of your bike, and start rolling. You'd be amazed how much you can carry on a bike. You might have to walk it though.

Skipping things on the way home is another reason not to take the bus. It provides nice breaks to your journey where you can ponder about the state of the world and your household requirements (staring at a fax/photocopier off Shaftsberry Avenue at midnight - do I really need this? Well not with 2kwat of electricity supply).

The cut electric cord
Some people say that if the electric cord is cut and the plug is missing, this is a sign that the appliance doesn't work, and therefore do not bother.

However I'm pretty sure we've found appliances without a plug that worked just fine. I also have a vague recollection of myself cutting the plug of a fridge I found in the street because I needed the plug. Maybe it was people like me that destroyed this spotneneous popular sign system.

My Best finds

A washing machine - thrown away because the door handle was broken

Oil radiator heaters - I just found one the other day, this is my third, and of course it works fine. Heating with electricity is wasteful, but this is the most efficient way.

A disfunctional cash till - I made a clock from its buttons. NO SALE! is noon.