‘I got £10,000-plus of food for free’: the bin diver making the most of thrown-away groceries

Tim Barratt goes round the back of delis, cafes and shops to find discarded produce from bins before it is picked up by refuse collectors. Photograph: Tim Barratt

Tim Barratt* lives on a diet of organic steak and ethically reared £25 roast chickens, asparagus and fresh pasta costing £7 a pack. But the 22-year-old hasn’t spent any money on food – with a few exceptions such as ground coffee, spices and rice – for a year and a half. He has eaten the equivalent, he thinks, of upwards of £10,000 of mainly top-end fare, for free.

All his dinners (or “binners”, as he likes to call them) with friends, breakfasts and packed lunches are made up of ingredients scavenged from bins.