Thursday Evening Walk

After talking about food waste and hunger, I decided to put into practice one of the topics I covered during the presentation, namely dumpster diving in Budapest. As usual, Thursday is a dumpster diving day.

Recently I noticed that a lot more people compared to the previous year go in the streets and dumpster dive. It would be interesting to observe what they search for, as depending on their needs they are searching either for food, or stuff to sell or metal beer cans (to exchange them for money), or to find something interesting (this is what I am doing).

So, despite the enlarged number of dumpster divers in Budapest, the trash is still there in big amounts, and it is enough for everyone who dumpster dives. So, today I walked just in the usual 7th district before going home by the last bus. Surprisingly, I found lots of stuff tonight.

So, first of all, talking about stuff, I found a lot of really useful clothes, such as socks, and a pair of running shoes. Then I found a couple of sweaters, a bunch of male underwear, after-shave liquid, a Santa Claus mask, some candles and a bag that can go to the FreeShop. A toilet washing liquid I found I will use in the toilet at home as there was none for the past week… I also  found a huge piece of white soft textile that is supposed to be used somewhere in the house like a decorative curtain around a table or a bed. In any case I will think about its usage, but so far it seemed quite a cool thing to make multiple skirts.

As for food, in one trash bin I found a lot of nuts and rasins, as well as some Middle Eastern sweets, bab piskota (sweet biscuits), leftovers of honey, a bit of sugar, dry porrige or soup (it is all in Arabic on the package, so I had to guess from the picture) and lots of chewing gum. Then I also found some bread, a couple of apples, leftovers of a salad in a package and a banana.

Finally, I was really glad to find lots of soil for preplanting the vegetables for the garden, as well as some plants with soil on their roots. I hope they can be brought back to life. The weirdest plant I found is something similar to Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), an insect eating plant. So, I replanted all the plants I found and I am waiting to see if any of them will start growing soon.