Containers

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Containers

Containers , also known as garbage diving or dumpster diving , denotes the removal of discarded food from waste containers .

The containers are usually used in the waste bins of supermarkets, but also in factories. The food in it was mostly thrown away because of expired best-before dates , pressure and rot spots or as excess. However, many of these foods can be enjoyed for a certain period of time without any significant loss of taste or quality and without an increased health risk.

background

Vegetables and fruits from containers

Among the people who operate containers are, on the one hand, people in need and, on the other hand, people who campaign against food waste in this way or who do not want to support the food industry.

An American empirical study by Nicole Eikenberry and Chery Smith from 2005 found that 18.9 percent of the 396 people questioned about their eating behavior had already consumed food from the garbage can at some point in their life. The most common motif in urban areas was hunger. In contrast, the best-known practice of containerization is motivated by a critique of globalization and capitalism and is an integral part of a way of life, freeganism , which is based on extensive refusal to consume and a boycott of the so-called throwaway society .

Legal position

Germany

Containers can be prohibited in accordance with Section 123 (1) StGB ( trespassing ) and / or, according to prevailing opinion, in accordance with Section 242 StGB ( theft ) (and possibly Section 243 StGB). Because of the inferiority, criminal prosecution can only be considered on application ( Section 248a and Section 123 (2) StGB). In the specific case, it depends on the exact circumstances. In legal practice (public prosecutors, courts, police), containers have already been negotiated in the third criminal court and even before the Federal Constitutional Court . Various public prosecutors and the police are tracking the containers. A criminal liability comes into consideration especially when overcoming a physical obstacle in front of a container, as trespassing or as a sometimes serious theft. Only legal minor opinions partly assume impunity, they argue with an upstream loss of property through throwing away ( dereliction ; throwing away as an implied declaration of intent ), which is, however, rejected by the prevailing opinion at the moment. Some voices in the literature speak out against criminal prosecution of containers because the injustice that has been realized and the guilt of the perpetrator in the container is only minor ( termination of any criminal proceedings according to § 153 StPO because of insignificance).

In Germany waste as collected in appropriate containers on private property such as supermarkets or factories and the municipal and private urban cleaning businesses for disposal is provided by the waste law attributed the Wegwerfers or property owner to pick up the property.

In 2004, a woman from Cologne who was caught in a container was charged with collective theft in a particularly serious case. The case was dropped against the requirement to do 60 hours of community service.

In May 2009 the Saxon state parliament dealt with the criminal assessment of the container following a small request from the Left Party . The trigger was a preliminary investigation against two container operators . In the meantime, the public prosecutor's office in Bautzen had already discontinued the proceedings because there was no particular public interest in the prosecution and the operator of the supermarket did not file a criminal complaint.

In June 2013, the Aachen regional court overturned a ruling by the Düren district court, which had fined two container operators for theft. The proceedings were discontinued unconditionally because the complaint was withdrawn by the supermarket chain making the application.

On January 31, 2019, two students from Olching , who had fetched edible food from the garbage container of a supermarket in 2018, were warned by the Fürstenfeldbruck district court for "jointly committed theft". The fine of 225 euros (15 daily rates of 15 euros) was suspended for two years ( warning with penalty ). As a condition of probation, the students were given eight hours of community service at a blackboard . The case has sparked national debates and protests against the verdict and the criminalization of the container. In 2019, Renate Künast called for a new regulation for food donations and legal protection for people who “go in containers”. The appeals were rejected as unfounded by the Bavarian Supreme Court on October 2, 2019. Only that the theft had been committed jointly was removed from the guilty verdict as superfluous. The Federal Constitutional Court did not accept the constitutional complaint directed against this for a decision by resolution of August 5, 2020 and stated that the interpretation of the specialized courts neither violated the prohibition of arbitrariness nor the assessment of evidence is constitutionally objectionable. The principle of proportionality and in particular the ultima ratio principle do not require any restrictions on criminal liability. The legislature may, in principle, criminally protect property under civil law, including those of economically worthless items. According to an opinion represented in the literature, the Bavarian Supreme Court could have decided completely differently if the contents of the container had been accessible to everyone and not secured with a square lock.

On March 26, 2019, two men were acquitted at the Hanover District Court because the criminal complaint was withdrawn by the branch manager of the affected store during the main hearing and, according to the Hanover public prosecutor's office, there was no particular public interest in prosecution.

In April 2019, the DIE LINKE parliamentary group filed a motion in the Bundestag to decriminalize the container of food. The application has not yet been discussed (as of August 21, 2020). At the end of May 2019, Hamburg's Justice Senator Till Steffen called for a change in the law so that containers would not be punished in the future. However, this project did not find a majority at a meeting of the justice ministers of the federal states.

Austria

According to Austrian law, containers are in principle not a criminal offense, since rubbish is considered an abandoned object if no property damage is committed, such as by breaking locks.

Switzerland

Markus Melzel, spokesman for the Basel public prosecutor's office: “What is thrown away and is not intended for third parties no longer belongs to anyone. If you don't have to climb over a fence or break a lock to get to the goods, then there is nothing wrong with containers. "

France

To make food inedible for containerization, supermarkets in France had doused them with Javel water. This was the reason for a change in the law, which the French parliament unanimously approved in 2015. Accordingly, supermarkets with a sales area of ​​more than 400 square meters are no longer allowed to dispose of their leftover food in containers. You have to donate them to charities, sell them as animal feed, make them available for fertilizer or energy production.

Canada

Dumpster diving in public places is legal in Montreal . Accordingly, it is also practiced during the day.

New Zealand

Dumpster diving is illegal in New Zealand , so the activity will be postponed to the night.

United States

In the United States , a sharp Anglo-Saxon law of the true generally speaking, trespassing , after which the police persons who are presumably without permission are on private land arrest, and can charge. The exact legal status refers to the locality, whereby the village, city, district or state can have their own jurisdiction. At the same time, there are locally different laws and guidelines that deal with the possession of waste: the waste can belong to whoever leaves it to be picked up on the property or on the street, the waste becomes ownerless , or the waste becomes de jure the property of those who whose job it is to pick him up. The exact local legal situation is not only important in the case of containers, it also determines the circumstances under which waste can be collected by the judicial authorities with or without a search warrant. Again, generally speaking, containering is generally not legally prosecuted, although there are exceptional cases and the local legal situation often adapts to local political circumstances.

In the USA, “information diving” is understood to mean the acquisition of sensitive data and information from trash cans, both printed material and the rescue of old computers and hard drives .

Web links

Wiktionary: containern  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Containers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Maria Grewe: Rubbish diving . In: sharing, repairing, garbage dipping. Cultural strategies for dealing with scarcity and abundance. Transcript Verlag , Bielefeld 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3858-5 , p. 72-79 .
  • Nicole Eikenberry, Chery Smith: Attitudes, beliefs, and prevalence of dumpster diving as a means to obtain food by Midwestern, low-income, urban dwellers . In: Agriculture and Human Values , 22/2005, pp. 187-202. DOI 10.1007 / s10460-004-8278-9

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Russell Vinegar, Pete Parker, George McCourt: More than a response to food insecurity: demographics and social networks of urban dumpster divers . In: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability . tape 21 , no. 2 , August 26, 2014, doi : 10.1080 / 13549839.2014.943708 .
  2. ↑ a b Maria Grewe: Share, repair, garbage dipping. Cultural strategies for dealing with scarcity and abundance . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3858-5 , p. 72.
  3. ↑ Sean Thomas: Do freegans commit theft? In: Legal Studies . tape 30 , no. 1 , March 2010, ISSN  0261-3875 , p. 98-125 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1748-121X.2009.00142.x .
  4. ↑ Malkus: Containern - punishable and punishable ?, in Magazin für Restkultur , 2016, p. 3. Available online (PDF).
  5. ↑ Vergho: Containers - It can be a criminal offense to take food waste with you . In: DLR . No. 9 , 2014, p. 414 .
  6. ^ Bread of grace for a thief
  7. ^ Answer of the state government of Saxony
  8. ↑ City - Country - Abundance by Jörg Schindler
  9. ↑ Alleged thieves triumph in court . n-tv.de from June 26, 2013.
  10. ^ AG Fürstenfeldbruck, judgment of January 30, 2019 - 3 Cs 42 Js 26676/18
  11. ↑ Tanja Podolski: Groceries from the garbage can: female students found guilty of containers. January 31, 2019, accessed August 18, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Dominik Baur: Food rescuers in court. Criminal case of food rescue. In: Taz, January 31, 2019.
  13. ↑ Ariane Lindenbach: It doesn't have to be containers. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 4, 2019.
  14. ↑ Ulrike Heidenreich: Eating out of the dumpster - a question of morality. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 30, 2019.
  15. ↑ Food from supermarket rubbish. Female students convicted of containers. In: Spiegel Online , January 30, 2019.
  16. ↑ Severin Veitleder: Will Germany get a law against food waste ? In: BR24 , February 1, 2019.
  17. ↑ After the judgment on "Containern" - Künast calls for new regulations for food donations . In: ZDF today, February 1, 2019.
  18. ↑ a b BayObLG Munich, decision v. 02.10.2019 - 206 StRR 1013/19, 206 StRR 1015/19
  19. ↑ BVerfG, decision of the 3rd Chamber of the Second Senate of August 5, 2020 - 2 BvR 1985/19
  20. ↑ Press release No. 75/2020 of the Federal Constitutional Court of August 18, 2020
  21. ↑ Manuel Lorenz: BayObLG: It depends on the circumstances of the individual case whether there is a relinquishment of ownership in the surrender of ownership - fundamental decision on containers . In: FD-StrafR 2019, 422440 . "The case would have to be judged completely differently, for example, if the container could have been opened by anyone without a specific tool."
  22. ^ General: Roland Schmitz in: Munich Commentary on the Criminal Code, 3rd edition 2017, Rn. 35, quote: "If goods are thrown into a publicly accessible waste container that is used for disposal as" residual waste "or" organic waste ", one can assume that the owner will dispose of it and thus dereliction."
  23. ↑ Is containers theft? Court acquits men. Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ), March 26, 2019, accessed on August 21, 2020 .
  24. ↑ BT-Drs decriminalize food containers . 19/9345 of April 11, 2019.
  25. ↑ Decriminalize food containers. Basic information about the process. In: DIP: Documentation and information system for parliamentary processes. German Bundestag, accessed on August 21, 2020 .
  26. ↑ Groceries in the trash - containers allowed soon?
  27. ↑ tagesschau.de: Food in the garbage: Containers remain prohibited for the time being. Retrieved June 6, 2019 .
  28. ^ Conference of Justice Ministers of the Länder: Containers remain forbidden. In: sueddeutsche.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 6, 2019, accessed on August 21, 2020 .
  29. ↑ Maria Kapeller: Yoghurt, donuts, paprika: fresh from the garbage can to the table. In: derstandard.at. March 30, 2009, accessed January 26, 2020 .
  30. ↑ Article by Mena Kost: Page no longer available , search in web archives: Trash divers on a shopping spree on streetnewsservice.org and in surprise from April 14, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.streetnewsservice.org
  31. ↑ Wolfgang Lehmacher: Global Supply Chain. Technical progress, transformation and circular economy , Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-10158-9 , p. 168.
  32. ↑ Juliana Mansvelt: Green Consumerism: An A-to-Z Guide . SAGE, Los Angeles 2011, ISBN 978-1-4129-9685-3 (English).