Ready Steady Skip: Trailer and website launched!

"the food we eat contributes up to a third of the emissions that are poisoning the planet"

No, the meat we eat contributes up to a third of the emissions that are poisoning the planet. Important distinction. You will better save the planet by encouraging less consumption of meat.

Eating meat that is going to be landfill anyway is good for the planet, but ignores the ongoing cost of it's production. Skipping is never going to be a solution to climate change as by it's nature it is a fringe activity. Any activity that feeds of the waste of another activity is never going to be a solution caused by the original problem. Only a certain percentage can live off out of date food. Skipping isn't a solution for the hungry in Somalia.
It is like biodesiel. Making your own from locally available waste oil is admirable, and for years lots of environmentalists promoted it here, and to the general public it seemed as if biodesiel had a part to play in stopping climate change. That created the political environment where the current government spouts platitudes about climate change while imposing a minimum quota of biofuels in British petrol.

By the way freeganism is a helluva lot more than skipping, but it's not neccessarily environmental or moral. Any free lunch is freegan. That banana you put down your trousers in Tesco - that's freegan, My vegan pal who ate a deer he'd tried to save after a dog had attacked it, freegan. That restaurant meal I didn't have to pay for, freegan. That cops packed lunch that my pal stole, freegan. Any corporate suit who blags his way into a shooting party and eats a grouse, freegan. A non-freegan can eat a freegan meal as much as they can eat a vegan meal but that doesn't them them a freegan. The trick is to stay freegan, and the ultimate ideal is to make all food free for everyone, and you can't do that from just skipping. IMAO.

British supermarkets drastically overstock to ensure every product is in stock. If you are trying to highlight wastage and the damage that does then persuade people to accept shop shortages. Persuade people to cook less, and never to overeat or cook more food than is likely to be eaten. Most of all though, eat less meat.

I personally decided to stop promoting skipping when freegans took the Observer Magazine food critic out to promote it. I do not appreciate competing for food with people who learned about it from the Obsevrer Magazine food critic. Most people eating out of skips can't just decide to go to a five star restaurant instead. 'Lifestyler' is a derogatory term that is rarely so warranted. Waste is a class issue - the rich consume then excrete, the poor go hungry then get shat on. Recycling, food waste, and climate change are related but seperate issues. Hungry poor people have always skipped and recycled certainly since the 1970's I remember one local eccentric would collect every glass bottle in the town and environs, including the local tip, and then take them back to his house. His house was legendary as overflowing with bottles, but I never saw it. Boys would follow him around chanting 'Airchie Airchie Bottle Mairchie', meaning 'Archy, Archy, Bottle Merchant'. You know you are ahead of your time when gangs of little boys chant weird shit at you whereever you go. He did live off the money he made from the bottles, either selling in bulk to a recycler or just returning the ones that had deposits. The 'council tip' was once a garden of delights where entire families would spend afternoons, searching like shoppers in a sale for working goods discarded by rich people because they were out of date or cosmetically damaged. These people were never popular even among the poor simply because the smell would never leave them. I digress.

My point is the most vunerable people, or rather people like us at our most vunerable, rely on skips. They aren't too happy when they have to go hungry or walk long distances to eat freely because the sons and daughters of their economic oppressors have cleared their sole food source as a lifestyle choice or to stock some festival they can't afford to attend. With food prices rising this may lead to conflict without better etiquette- ie don't take more than you personally need for the next day even if it is in a skip. Never empty a skip completely, allow some to waste rather than risk someone else going hungry. Famine is worse than war. There is an unavoidable wastage in whisky production referred to as 'the angels measure', commonly ascribed as evaporation although a certain measure of that will most certainly be good, honest theft. A certain level of wastage is perfectly okay to protect the poorest.

Years ago I proposed a TV programme promoting skipping called 'Ready Steady Puke" - after one bad meal left me less than happy that skipping wasn't an option for me, it was a necessity at the time. I avidly promoted skipping for a while, one of my friends set-up a Norwegian website similar to yours. If you are looking for a new project I also proposed a programme called 'Who Wants to Beat a Millionaire' where viewers chip in for the legal fees and a cash reward for anyone who posts a video of any millionaire being 'happy-slapped'. Now that's what I'd call hilarity.

Has anyone actually approached a supermarket and asked it to make it's surplus available in store for free ? Or offered to seperate their true waste from what we do take ? I'm sure there are new ideas here but just simply taking waste to make an environmental point seems simplistic without recognising the related issues.

The most important of which is reducing meat consumption, especially of larger brained mammals like cows.

Thanks for your well thought out comment. Ready Steady skip is a work in progress and is open to all ideas and views on the subject, hopefully we'll get a bit of a forum going on the website as all the above issues are relevant.

If this project can prompt people to think about food waste and healthy eating/ consumption for us and the planet then thats cool...... lets reclaim it from the critics at the Observer.

I'm glad you never took my comment as a dig. I do think it is good to skip, as it is good to produce biofuel from locally available waste, but these and other environmental activities are good locally but unsustainable globally imo. You certainly have got me thinking though, and that rarely happens so thanks.
I've got a huge shopping centre near me, hundreds of shops. It has a central skip location which is patrolled, CCTVed with each skip padlocked, and about 20 seconds from the local police HQ. Not impregnable but overly difficult, and nobody skips it so the waste there must be phenomenal. I'll write to the shopping centre management and ask if volunteers can intercept the waste from the skips before they get into the skips, to distribute offsite. Or maybe provide a shelter so that the staff doing the dumping pre-sort it themselves. The motivation for the shopping centre would be greenwash, less landfilled waste.

wow dp - nice rant - glad we inspired a bit of rage in you - and that was only the trailer!!!
just a few comments to hopefully ease a few of your concerns
- although all of us involved with RSS put alot of time and effort (and £00.00p) into producing this short film - it wasn't in it's self intended to be a solution to world food shortages- unsubstainable farming methods- and supermarket greed - as avid skippers ourselves - the idea was formulated as a way of highlighting and sharing the shock and awe we feel everytime we manage to feed 5or6 households for a week with a single skipping mission - the idea of a spoof tv show was that the information be as accessible as possible - in a format that in no small way adds to the problem - just imagine all those families sitting down to a readymeal whilst watching cookery shows - and all that lovely nutritious food going to waste
and when the accusation of lifesyle skippers gets thrown in ...hell yeah - your life style might be to work in a job you hate to earn money to buy food - whereas others of us prefer to put our time into education, creativity, and dozens of positive projects - also choosing not to support the capitalist system as it stands by giving them our greasy ££s
so yes - homeless we may not be - but you can't say we take the food from people who might need it - we take what we think we can use - we share it out - and - to be honest there is SO MUCH food waste in this country - that the bins are almost always overflowing with bounty - if you go a looking
about the meat issue - we are all veggie - we cooked veggie meals in the show- we talk about the wastfulness of the meat industry in the film - if ever we take skipped meat it is for pets(who prefer it to the canned crud they usually get offered) - yes obviously eating rather than incinerating food is preferable - but that crazy pink slimy plastic packed stuff you normally find in bins just aint right
so - when you say we should be doin more to encourage vegetarianism - do you mean like making a film full of info and recipee ideas - and plenty to think about?

anyway - damn it - these here compuper things are to blame - i'm ranting now - in short - all comments welcome - but when you have loads of ideas about how we should have done it - before even seeing the film - then i think perhaps it is your own short comings you are talking about - so if you go make something aswell - then i'll have a rant about that too

we'd all love to see plenty more creative ways of discussing all the issues involved - and really do see this RSS as a little gesture to set the ball roling - so - more i say - MORE - can't wait to see what else follows

so watch this space - what will we come up with next?

love