The Upside of ORT

The summer I turned ten years old, I packed my bags and headed off to Camp Merrowvista, in New Hampshire. I was thrilled by the thought of a new place to explore, but less so about the matching bright yellow raincoat and pants I was forced to wear in the downpour on the first day. Can you say quack quack? Nevertheless, at the end of the two weeks when I returned to Boise, I was eager to tell my parents all about what I'd learned and the experiences I'd had.

That first year of camp was very valuable to me. I learned how to live and work together with other people, cope with homesickness, and I even became more environmentally aware. At camp they not only taught us the joy of composting, but we became conscious of the waste we generated. We called it ORT, short for Our Remaining Tidbits. This included all the food items that we couldn't compost, like meat and dairy. We became aware of how much food to take at meals, learning to take less and come back for seconds. The ORT that was generated at every meal was collected into a bucket to be weighed after the meal. If the ORT for the entire dining hall was under 1 pound, the counselors would perform a song for us. We would each strive to be ORT free, because those who were got to identify themselves by slapping their hands over their heads and yelling "ORT! ORT! ORT!" like a seal, similar to the way my father used to cheer us on at soccer games.

Until last week, the experience at camp pretty much defined my perception of garbage, simply waste as little as possible. Over bread, juice, and chocolate salvaged from a DUMPSTER, our guest speaker spoke to us about the beauty of dumpster diving. Yes, that is collecting food from the waste stream and eating it. Of course, there are boundaries on this concept. Dairy would probably not be the best bet to consume because it is extremely perishable without a refrigerator. But when executed reasonably, dumpster diving can actually be a viable food source!

During our discussion, we defined trash as being at the end of its social life. That is, trash is something that nobody wants, needs, or for which has any use. Taking this definition into consideration, a surprisingly significant percent of what gets put in a dumpster can not be defined as trash. Bakeries constantly throw out perfectly good bread, because they have to keep up with the promise of nothing but fresh products, so the day old stuff gets kicked to the curb. The same thing goes with juice. Supermarkets must discard expired juice, even if it is only minutes past the expiration date printed on the container. Sometimes the juice isn't even expired, it is simply older than the other products that need room on the shelf. Some precautions must be taken, of course, such as ensuring the seal is intact, washing the food thoroughly, and doing a small taste test before consuming large amounts of the product. It is this concept that makes the phrase "One man's trash is another man's treasure" so literal!

The entire concept of eating waste was inspired by what is called punk cuisine. Dylan Clark explains it beautifully in his article The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine, when he talks about how the ethics of eating processed food change when it goes into the trash. Food is put into three categories: raw, cooked and rotten. Punk cuisine is composed of mostly raw foods, because many cooked foods are thoroughly processed. The exception to this is the rotten foods, because "by bathing corporate food in a dumpster...punk food is, in a sense, decommodified."

Whatever the reason for dumpster diving; whether it be for principle like the punks, or simply to reduce waste , what a perfect solution to the ORT problem! Of course, people are still going to generate inedible waste, yes, but a lot of it is edible. By combining this concept of reducing waste and rescuing what is still good, we can kill two birds with one stone. Instead of falsely stimulating the economies of supermarkets by buying them out of canned food for food drives, why not feed the homeless a day-old but yet perfectly safe dumpster meal? We can turn the burden of trash and hunger into a blessing with a bit of resourcefulness!