Mafredi Malik: Not Your Regular Diver
“While 2 billion people are dying of hunger, (insert comparison of choice)” — Coby Babani
I keep hearing this sentence from our unique boss/colleague, -he doesn’t like being called a boss even though he technically is. But you didn’t hear it from me-. He has repeated this sentence a few times more than I could count, so it actually started playing in my head whenever I’d even dare to throw away what’s left of my tuna sandwich.
According to the Food Aid Foundation, 1 in 7 people on Earth are hungry. The irony in this is that 1/3 of food is wasted. While the smartest kid in class can suggest we could solve this issue by not wasting said food, and perhaps providing it to those in need, you would think it’s a thought that hasn’t crossed anyone’s mind. However, it seems as if even though we are aware of the problem’s existence, not many people are working towards solving it, and disregard how significant it is. Having said that, are you aware that by not participating in solving it, you could be part of the issue itself?
MEET MAFREDI MALIK
Marek is one of the rare people that have paused for a bit, and thought “I, as an individual, am also able to make a difference”, thus our hero for this week.
Born and raised in Czechoslovakia until the age of 25, he moved to Slovenia to do masters in Economics and IT then came back after finishing his studies. He decided to take on a short break in Turkey, then found a job back in Slovakia –which he wasn’t very fond of-, so he quit and moved to Indonesia for another opportunity. Following all that, he couldn’t find a position in which he could see himself back home. Until he got a call from a friend in Amsterdam in 2014. He currently works in the Market Research Association (Web Department) of a company in Amsterdam.

To him, there’s no “start” to his interest in social issues. It’s something humane that you obtain the second you are able to think. His family doesn’t dumpster dive but they don’t throw away food. His grandfather once said “I’ll never be hungry again and I’ll never throw food in my life” because he lived and experienced hunger during WW2, so he believes that’s how he started appreciating food.
Other than that, many of the people around him were involved in social work; a friend that works with drug addicts, another who’s working with gypsies trying to include them into society, even one that used to run a vegan delivery catering at his own kitchen.
FSEN AND COBY BABANI

When he met Coby in 2015 he started getting involved. One guy in Utrecht who studied sustainability and happened to be a friend of Coby’s, has posted about Taste Before You Waste event in Amsterdam; which is an initiative focused on the prevention of food waste that was founded in Amsterdam in November 2012. He was interested thanks to the short talks about food waste which were part of the event’s agenda. Nonetheless he had just moved to the city and didn’t know anyone, which was more of a reason to attend. It was the second meeting for FSEN but the first meeting for him.
FSEN (Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network) tries to act like a middle man, between the side that is producing (making food waste) and the people who can solve this problem or turn it to use. In total he has been to 2 of their events, where he was a speaker about dumpster diving for both; first in 2015 and the second one in 2016.
ADVENTURES WITH DUMPSTER DIVING
The idea of dumpster diving is not new to him and his punk scene friends. It all started thanks to 3 of them, who ironically have masters and a PhD degree, unlike what society would’ve expected of them. At that time his mother was complaining he can’t cook, so he decided he doesn’t want to go shop for food he would most likely screw up. Therefore he went to the dumpster, picked up what he could find that is edible and cooked it. He usually finds food in big amounts; 100 chocolates, 50 boxes of soya milk, birthday cakes, juices, everything you can imagine. They even found 10 kg of Salmon fish once in Norway. They normally don’t take meat, but regarding the weather of said country and the fact that they went a day before and didn’t find anything meant it was recently thrown away, thus consumable.

However, in some countries is dumpster diving still considered illegal, like in Scotland for example. It’s not about the picking up of the food itself, but the getting into the source, since most dumpsters are in “private property”. He hasn’t faced any big troubles during his dumpster diving journey, but he did get shouted at once or twice because of this law. However, in order to tackle it he is planning on contacting shop owners, shops such as Kiosk; which are retail merchandising units that have been his recent dumpster diving targets. His plan is kindly asking them to allow someone to come and pick up their unsold and otherwise wasted products and deliver them wherever they are needed (homeless shelters, refugee camps ,…).
He has another suggestion for a solution, where Kiosk or other hypermarkets can open a section/store for people with low income selling close expiration date products. Must he buy food, he adjusts his meal according to what they have on discount. Most Dutch people of average and higher income don’t go for discounts, which is why he thinks this idea would work perfectly here and wouldn’t be of too much loss for shops.
THE ROOTS OF FOOD WASTE

Seeing that he was born in Czechoslovakia, he remembers when he was 3 or 4 years old the long lines in front of shops, and how common it was to find a stock(s) simply sold out. Something unthinkable in our west-world. In this “modern” world it’s constantly a “we need to satisfy the customer so we need to have everything”. They don’t do any advanced research or planning to learn about their customers’ preferences, so they just order big quantities and at the end they throw lots of it away because of consumption behavior changes, seasonal fluctuation, etc. One of the biggest reasons of this current global food waste problem is the supply and demand chain. Walmart wastes almost 40% of their products, but they keep on making more money. Some of Mafredi’s friends walked into a Walmart in the USA (in the middle of nowhere) and found about 50 different types of cereal. Why would a variety of 50 ever be needed? Shops should focus on their ordering behaviors and sort them according to the location.
One of his current challenges is the homeless shelter’s new policy; where they stopped accepting cooked food so he is working towards solving this problem.
MESSAGE TO THE READERS
“People can still find good and usable groceries not just in a shop but also behind/beside the shop. They should think of the carbon print of a product and all the energy and manpower wasted. If they don’t want to dumpster dive, they can still encourage (request, send email over and over, boycott,..) a local grocery store to be more environmentally positive”
