In our Food Issue, Liam Smillie shadowed the anarchist group Food Not Bombs to learn about how they are tackling the food-waste crisis and seeking to alleviate food poverty.

Words by Liam Smillie and photos by Dylan Lombard

Four bright red commercial bins seem to almost glow under the halogen lights of a supermarket delivery bay somewhere deep in the Southside.

Ker-chunk... Ker-chunk... Ker-chunk…

A young man dressed all in black moves quickly from left to right, opening the flat plastic lids of the bins in perfect rhythm. I watch as three other figures follow behind and take their place at each bin. In silent unison they begin rifling through the waste, pulling out transparent bin bags and sorting them into separate piles.

It’s been five minutes since the raid started. The team works quickly and quietly – taking well-preserved food items and loading them into rucksacks and saddlebags on a bicycle. I stay quiet a few yards, watching and listening.

Suddenly, one of the team members puts his hand up. The team stops instinctively. Before they have a chance to flee, they hear footsteps approach from inside the supermarket. The sound of the delivery door opening pierces the air.

“What the fuck is going on here?!” a gruff Glaswegian accent demands. The divers have been caught red-handed. The team don’t say a word, instead they frantically grab their bags, turn on their heels and briskly walk away, ignoring the shouts that come after them.

***

The bin squad is a part of Glasgow Food not Bombs; an independent cell of an international collective set up in America in the 1980s as a ‘non-violent direct action initiative’ to protest nuclear armament by providing free food for vulnerable people. Cells have now been established in over 1000 cities in more than 65 countries, all fully autonomous of one another. There is no hierarchical structure within the collective, there are no leaders or headquarters, all decisions within a chapter of the group are reached by consensus.

The night-time activity I was shadowing was a ‘bin-raid’, a method of food procurement for Food Not Bombs. The raids themselves fall into a legal grey area, although they could fall under common law theft in Scotland. Divers can also get into trouble for trespassing, which is often necessary to get into commercial rubbish containers.

Bin raiding isn’t Food not Bombs’ primary method of food procurement. They also receive a lot of support through food parcels both from the public and organisations like Green City Whole Foods.

However, the group cannot always rely on donations. The activist (who wishes to remain anonymous) who had been leading the bin raid explained the group’s reason for dumpster diving:

“Dumpstering is an anti-capitalist action. We’re fighting food waste - the amount that just gets thrown out. It’s blatant classism. If you’re eating out of the bin, you’re eating out of their profits.”

It might sound shocking that people are willing to wade through rubbish to feed people – but beyond the political motivation, it's also seen as a necessity in the fight against starvation. n the family resource survey, published by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) on 25 March, it was reported that between 2019-2020, 43 percent of people on Universal Credit reported having low or very low food security. The amount received by those on Universal Credit is not enough for people to be able to feed themselves; it barely sustains the claimant in a state of poverty.

The Trussell Trust lists the top three reasons for food bank usage between 2019-2020 as: low income (39 percent), benefit delays (17 percent) and benefit changes (15 percent).

Almost half of all households surveyed at food banks by The Trussell Trust in the summer of 2020 owed money to the DWP for loans and overpayments. On top of that, nearly three quarters of households surveyed were paying arrears out of their allowance each month from their ‘advance payment’ which is offered to cover the initial five week period before their Universal Credit payments start.

This leads us back to Food Not Bombs, one of many community groups working on food provision in Glasgow. What sets them apart from many other groups is that they are overtly political, acting as a pressure group as much as a food provider. They also only offer vegan and vegetarian food. They see this as vital, as trying to live on a restrictive diet like vegetarianism (and especially veganism) is incredibly difficult when living with food insecurity.

All the food that they gather from the bin raids are cooked the next morning, for distribution the day after that. The food they use is safe from contamination due to overpackaging. Cooking so soon ensures that the food they gather doesn’t spoil, and sell-by dates in shops are often exaggerated for legal safeguarding purposes.

***

“Free food! Free haggis!” shouts a lone English accent in Queen’s Park one Sunday afternoon. This is Flo, standing proudly behind the Food Not Bombs stall. Their hands shield their eyes from the afternoon sun as they shout to passers-by enjoying a Sunday stroll.

“I’m alright, hen. You’re doing a great thing though!” an older woman replies, out for a walk with a pair of pristine white Westies.

The clientele in Queen’s Park is varied to say the least; middle-class families, young hipsters, skateboarders, goths, recent immigrants from all over the world, people who are seeking asylum, as well as homeless or otherwise vulnerable people.

For the food to reach the people who need it most first, the group sends out runners with meals on bikes, while a team of two or three stay with the stall doing community outreach and food distribution in the park.

One such runner is Rory who rolls in on his bike shortly after the stall was set up. He towers over everyone else, wearing a white Hello Kitty t-shirt tucked into slim-fit black trousers cropped above the ankle and held up by black suspenders.

When asked why he was wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt, he laughs and replies: “I’m a big guy and people can get frightened if I rock up in front of them, so I wear non-threatening clothes like this when I’m doing distribution. I’ve got a whole drawer of t-shirts like this!”

Two teenage girls approach the stall on roller-skates soon after, emphatically telling the volunteers how great a thing they’re doing. They take a few boxes to hand out as they skate around the park.

One recipient is a Romanian horn-violinist in his 70s, busking just a few yards down from the stall. He’s been playing music since he was a young boy, and now plays every day in Queen’s Park, saving up money to return to Romania. He visits the stall every Sunday for his lunch and a brief chat with the volunteers before getting back to busking.

An older man approaches the stall, he picks out a few boxes for him and his wife, saying: “You are good people for doing this. I am going away for a few months but I hope to come back. I hope to see you here also. Staying around is the most important thing.”

***

Back with the bin diving team, enough distance has been put between them and the supermarket, meaning there’s a chance to go through the haul. The raiders had gathered eight bags of potatoes, loads of assorted fruits and vegetables, as well as hundreds of biscuits & chocolates. They’ll be cleaned, cooked and distributed. Then the team will be out again, in search of a new dumpster diving destination.

This article first appeared in Issue 2 of Greater Govanhill magazine. To get a copy of this issue, along with all other issues, please follow the link