Recently, we’ve been discussing food wasting and dumpster diving in class. During these discussions, I kept thinking about episodes that I have seen of some of my favorite shows that incorporate either food waste or dumpster diving. There are shows about these topics and documentaries about these very real problems, but I wanted to talk about these problems as seen in popular sitcoms that present the problem in a humorous way. Even though this issue isn’t a laughing matter, I think that it’s great to have television shows that people actually watch showing this very real problem.
In The Office, Steve Carrell plays an incredibly uneducated boss that lives in his own little world. In one episode he gets lost in Scranton, PA (even though that’s where he lives and works) and also doesn’t have any money or a cell phone on him. Starting to get hungry, Michael looks for a way to get food. He stops at a hot dog stand and asks the worker if he can have a hot dog even though he can’t pay. Michael tells the man he will leave his watch with him and will come back later to pay. The man says no and Michael says “what do you do with the hot dogs you don’t sell at the end of the day.” “Throw them out,” the man replies. To add humor to the situation Michael responds with “well then why don’t you throw one out into my mouth.” Of course the man does not go for this and turns Michael away leaving him hungry. Although this is a funny and fake situation, it calls our attention to the problem of food waste. This stand was throwing away perfectly good food at the end of the day instead of giving it to the poor and hungry. Although this a fake stand, I’m positive there are stands in the real world that do the very same thing.
The next show is Seinfeld starring Jerry Seinfeld (as Jerry), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (as Elaine), Jason Alexander (as George) and Michael Richards (as Kramer). In one episode, Elaine gets the idea for a muffin shop that only sells the tops of muffins because the tops are the only parts that people really want to eat. Her idea is stolen and the muffin shop is opened and becomes a hit. After yelling at the man who stole her idea, he lets her become a partner in the business and she tells him he’s making the muffins wrong. He was just making the tops, but Elaine tells him he needs to make the whole muffin and cut the stumps off and throw them away. Kramer is asked to take the bags of perfectly good muffins stumps to a garbage dump. He unsuccessfully tries to throw the muffins stumps away at two different dumps. He gets turned away because what he was throwing away wasn’t garbage, but food. The muffin stumps end up with one of Jerry’s neighbors who eats them all. Again, in this fake situation we see food almost being wasted and thrown away. Of course the stumps do eventually get eaten, but not by someone in need. That food could make a difference if distributed to the right people.
One short example of dumpster diving is in Parks and Recreation where Andy Dwyer (played by Chris Pratt) dumpster dives in order to avoid going back to his job in London. He hides in the dumpster and his wife April (played by Aubrey Plaza) finds him. After encouraging him to go back to work, Andy dumpster dives once more to find his wallet. He also finds noodles and goes to eat them, but April tells him not too. 
The last example has to do more with dumpster diving then it does food waste, but shows the life of a freegan, a group of people we learned about in class. In It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, two of the main characters, Charlie (played by Charlie Day) and Frank (played by Danny DeVito) embrace a life of dumpster diving. In fact they furnish their entire apartment using the dumpster. They find things they need and things they most certainly do not in the dumpster and view it all as treasure. Their apartment becomes insanely cluttered and disgusting and makes for a very funny situation. The episode shows that there are real people that do this and that valuable things can be found in a dumpster, but in this situation not everything you find is valuable. You know what they say, one man’s trash is another mans treasure. 
