2/9/2009
Despite
welfare payments of just 90 (£78) a month, Pierrick Goujon enjoys a rich and balanced diet. “My problem is
over-eating,” he said. “I get indigestion from time to time.” His trick? Mr Goujon,
26, is a scavenger who feeds himself by looking in supermarket dustbins for
products thrown away as unfit for sale.
“It's
amazing what you can find - meat, fruit, vegetables, cakes, tinned food, rice,
pasta and all sorts of other things. I go twice a week and I come back with
enough for myself and for my friends and neighbours.”
He is not alone. According to a report published by the French Government, an
increasing number of people are eating what mainstream society considers to be rubbish as the economic crisis bites into their
income.
It
is a modern version of an ancestral French custom. From the Middle
Ages, the poor had an official right of glanage
(literally, gleaning), which involved scouring farmers' fields for wheat or
other crops left after the harvest.
Today
they search markets for left-over fruit and vegetables and look in the bins of
shops, according to the report commissioned by Martin Hirsch,
“Who
would not be shocked by this?” said Mr Hirsch, who
added that the spread of the practice came amid growing poverty as
The
report said les glaneurs represented a broad
spectrum of the poorer echelons of French society. Some were unemployed and
homeless. Others were students, pensioners or mothers with insufficient income
to pay for food for their children. Many were ashamed at having to scavenge for
food in le pays de la gastronomie. Some of
them, though, were open about what they saw as a political statement against
commercial wastefulness.
Mr Goujon, a traveller who lives in a lorry, says that he began hunting
through pizza parlour bins when he was destitute at
the age of 20. “Then I discovered how much you can get from supermarket bins -
meat that's got two days to go before the sell-by date or tins that have just
got a slight dent in them.” He says that he has adopted the philosophy of the Freegans, an American movement which promotes the idea of
eating thrown-away food in protest at consumerism.
“I've
found I can eat perfectly well like this,” said Mr Goujon, who describes himself as a récupée
rateur.
“I've never been ill because I've eaten something rotten. It's all perfectly
good food. But you need to know which supermarkets to go to. Some of them
destroy their unsold food rather than putting it into bins.”
Le
glanage is also gaining ground in markets
around
Take,
for instance, Marie, 70, who scavenges in Barbès
market in the north of the capital. “All these fruit and vegetables which are
sacrificed are very helpful to me,” she said, brandishing a leek which she had
recovered from a bin. “I was a concierge and I've got a pension of €700 a month
and my husband of €900 a month. We pay rent of €900 a month and our two
children still live at home even though they're both more than 30.
“Life's
difficult for us, and rather than being kicked out of our flat because we can't
afford the rent, I prefer to get by this way.”