No mercy for Viennese

Man “rescues” food from garbage: gets prison sentence

Unbelievable: according to estimates, 26 kilograms of food end up in the trash every second (!).(Bild: viennaslide)

Food "rescued", now imprisonment: a Viennese man was sentenced to four weeks in prison for fishing edible food out of a garbage bin. Greenpeace is outraged and is calling for the law to be changed. 

Dumpster fishermen are the name given to those idealists who search for edible food in fresh supermarket waste around the world to save it from spoiling.

This is what a young Viennese man and his girlfriend did, taking food from plastic garbage cans, some of it originally shrink-wrapped in plastic, for their own breakfast and lunch. The man was reported and has now been sentenced to four weeks' conditional imprisonment (not legally binding) for theft.

"Saving food that would have been destroyed in a waste incineration plant anyway cannot and must not be a crime," rages Greenpeace agricultural expert Sebastian Theissing-Matei in view of the verdict, which is not yet legally binding. According to estimates, 26 kilograms of food are thrown away every second (!) in Germany.

Saving food from the incinerator should not be a crime! Saving food is environmental protection in action and a moral duty.

Sebastian Theissing-Matei, Landwirtschaftsexperte bei Greenpeace

Bild: (c)Mitja Kobal

According to Greenpeace, this amounts to 830,000 tons a year. This means that food worth 1.4 billion euros goes up in flames in waste incineration plants because it is past its best-before date. Theissing-Matei has had enough after the conviction of the Viennese: he demands an immediate change in the law.