Essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Salvation Army, just under one in five Australians who sought emergency relief admitted to scavenging discarded food from trash cans.
Aussies forced to eat from bins as cost-of-living crisis worsens
A Salvation Army report reveals that Australia’s most marginalised people have had to revert to eating spoiled food from bins in order to survive.
Preston Potts, Reporter
Updated Wed 27 May 2026 at 5:15 pm AESTThe Salvation Army has warned the cost-of-living crisis is spiralling out of control for Australia’s most disadvantaged groups, as a new report reveals those relying on the charity’s support had turned to eating out of bins and surviving on spoiled food.
A survey of 4,400 Australians seeking emergency relief support from the Salvos found that nearly one in five (19 per cent) were eating from bins, and three in five (60 per cent) were eating expired or spoiled food over the past 12 months.
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The Salvation Army’s Mayor, Bruce Harmer, told Yahoo News that it’s deeply confronting to see so many people across Australia feeling the levels of hardship.
“No one in Australia should be forced to choose between heating their home, feeding their children or buying medication, yet this is the reality facing more and more people every single day,” he said.
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Nationwide, the Salvos network spans 400 centres, providing assistance to one person every 17 seconds and delivering more than 1.74 million sessions of care to over 228,000 people in need.
Read more: https://au.news.yahoo.com/aussies-forced-to-eat-from-bins-as-cost-of-living-crisis-worsens-071438002.html
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Let’s do some math – 228,000 people x 19% = 43,000 people helped by the Salvos who are eating out of trash cans.
Of course the true number is likely much higher – many people forced into such a horrible predicament might be too ashamed to admit what they are doing.
Even though the Salvation Army didn’t say “renewable energy is the problem”, there is no doubt Net Zero has driven up cost of living pressures on these poor people. Renewables always cost more than conventional energy, because renewables cannot provide reliable electricity. A renewable grid cannot survive without backup. No matter how cheap the renewable component of the system, and cheap likely isn’t an appropriate word for a form of energy which requires such high subsidies, the conventional energy system backup still has to be paid for, even if it is switched off for some of the time.
