Dive! is a documentary by filmmaker Jeremy Seifert about dumpster diving for perfectly good food.

The 45-minute documentary follows Seifert and his friends as they explore the alleys and backstreets Los Angeles

grocery stores in search of good food tossed away by Trader Joes, Safeway, Whole Foods, Vons and others. These stores throw away good food usually the day before an expiration date. Often these expiration dates are suggestions and does not necessarily mean that the food is bad. In fact, as you see in this movie whole dumpsters are being filled with good, fresh and expensive food.

The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1996 that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people. Today we recover less than 2.5 percent. While individual Americans throw away a large percentage of that after buying the food and bringing it home to their refrigerator, a frightening amount ends up being tossed by grocery stores before it can be purchased.

And why isn’t it being given to homeless shelters or food banks? Well some of it is but it all depends on the store’s procedures and if they have someone who comes and picks it up. Ideally, it would be best if these companies would offer this service to take this food to the shelters or food banks directly.
Another good book on the subject of food waste  is American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half  Of Its Food and What you Can do About it, by Jonathon Bloom.

DIVE! the Movie: Dumpster Diving for Good Food