UVM senior Rose Thackeray walked behind the Price Chopper on Shelburne Road and stuffed her canvas bag with an assortment of produce: cucumber, celeriac, onions, broccoli rabe, apples, bananas, potatoes, green pepper and a lemon.
In an interview with Seven Days, Thackeray talks about the practice of dumpster diving and retrieving food from the supermarket chain’s compost containers.
Photo: Flickr/Creative Commons
She told the newspaper she gets about two-thirds of her food by this method. Her primary sources are this Price Chopper and the Shaw’s in Waterbury.
“It’s technically a form of gleaning,” Thackeray, an environmental studies major, told Seven Days. “Gleaning takes many forms, and it has a long history in many cultures. And this is how a 21st-century college student is practicing it.”
