SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Hundreds of dollars worth of food was found thrown in a dumpster in Winter Springs Monday morning, Channel 9 learned.
The food was found by Jeff Vanlester, an employee at Dearborn Electronics, which is off North Highway 17-92.
"It was a jar of peanut butter, so I picked it up and threw it in the dumpster, and of course, when I looked in there, whoa!" Vanlester said. "It was full of food and stuff."
Hundreds of cans of food, jars of peanut butter, boxes of cereal and fruit juice were thrown out. Many of the items' expiration dates were in 2017.
"(It's) extremely wasteful, and I don't like it at all," Vanlester said.
The food was in Publix grocery bags, so Channel 9 reporter Jeff Levkulich brought a few of the cans to a nearby Publix store. Employees scanned the items and said they hadn't been purchased at that location.
"I'm just trying to ponder, why would anybody even do this with perfectly good food?" asked John Murphy, president of Harvest Time International.
Murphy said the amount of food found in the dumpster could have fed hundreds of families.
"We can't get enough donated. We are actually going out and buying truckloads of food to fill the shelves," Murphy said.
Police said they are investigating the dumped food. There are no surveillance cameras in the area that would help determine who threw it out.
WFTV
