Parents feed their son from food found in bins to save around £150 a month

Most parents head to the supermarket to pick up ingredients for dinner but Chelsey Fleming, 25, and her boyfriend Johnny always try the bins first.

The couple from Georgia, U.S. started dumpster diving to save money just before the birth of their son Griffin, now eight months.

They say that using things left for landfill has saved them around $200 (£150) a month on food alone.

Chelsey and Johnny have faced run-ins with the police and judgement from others but they are determined to continue rifling through bins.

Since diving, they have even made money selling their finds online; from two dumpsters, they managed to make over £150 ($200) and have even salvaged items that have been used to make them look new again, like a Naked Palette and other makeup sets.

Chronicling their discoveries on social media has attracted a lot of positive attention from people who have been inspired by what they do.

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Johnnys aunt was a diver and she would give us stuff every time she came over; perfume, food, makeup, clothes, you name it. She showed us the ropes, Chelsey said.

The first time we went off on our own we hit the jackpot at a craft store where we found hundreds of pounds worth of Christmas merchandise, all new with tags. We were hooked.

Id say since Ive started planning our meals around the food we find, weve cut our monthly food shopping bill in half, easy.

We keep a lot of items we find, such as toothpaste and other personal hygiene items. We give away a lot of the food to friends and family.

Our local food banks are picky about what they take sadly, but we give whatever theyll accept, and we keep the rest.

I was posting my make-up finds online and people kept asking if Id sell them, so I recently started using an app to sell the makeup. Ive made $200 (£150) from only two dumpster dives at Ulta.

I have always been very frugal. We budget and spend our money wisely. Dumpster diving saves us and sometimes even earns us money. We hardly ever have to buy shampoo or toothpaste.

We live right next to a supermarket that throws away good produce every morning. I enjoy cooking our meals based around what we find, because it encourages me to try new things.

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Not long ago I found a jar of pickled beetroot, something I would never pick up at the store. I tossed it in a salad made from spinach, cucumber, feta cheese, walnuts and balsamic vinegar (all of which were rescued from a dumpster). It was delicious, and free.

We have an established route and we go a few times a week to look for food, makeup, home goods, whatever we can get our hands on.

When I dive in the daytime, I get funny looks from people, but that is only a con if you feel embarrassed, which is a feeling I only recently got over.

It certainly requires a bit of shamelessness. We live frugally and while others may see us as cheap, we look at it as resourceful.

Chelsey now wants to promote the lifestyle to help save the environment and save good food that goes to waste for nothing.

With all the pros of diving, there are a few cons; theres a risk of running into employees or the law. I have had a couple of run ins with the police, she said.

The first time it happened was our second time diving. We were on the wealthier side of town and Johnny was digging around while I sat in the car (I was super pregnant at the time).

A police car parked next to me and Johnny popped his head out from the dumpster. The police officer asked him what the heck he was doing. Johnny simply said he was digging through the trash looking for stuff. He was cool about it and just asked us to carry on elsewhere.

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It was embarrassing but funny because Im sure we looked ridiculous and Johnny was acting like a small child that just got caught reaching for the cookie jar.

The second time was recently; I was by myself driving away from the bin when I got pulled over. He asked what I was doing behind the store and I showed him my trunk full of rescued produce and offered him some. He was pretty cool about it.

Digging through the trash may seem gross to some, but what is truly disgusting is the amount of food going to waste.

No one in America should be going hungry with all the food that gets thrown out from big companies and even from our own homes.