Denmark
The subject for my portrait for Denmark is Sofie Juel Andersen, environmental activist and dumpster diver
About Denmark
Denmark is a Nordic country in the south-central portion of Northern Europe. It is the metropolitan part of and the most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the North Atlantic Ocean. Metropolitan Denmark is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, lying south-west and south of Sweden, south of Norway, and north of Germany, with which it shares a short border.
With a dense population and a high reliance on wood burning stoves, air pollution is one of the main environmental issues in Denmark along with a high amount of municipal waste. Greenland must also be mentioned her as this vast country in the north Atlantic will be massively impacted by melting ice sheets and permafrost thawing if climate change continues unchecked.
About Sofie
Sofie Juel Andersen is an environmental activist from Denmark. She is on Instagram @dumpsterdivingwsoff where she regularly posts what she has found in supermarket dumpsters and what she subsequently does with this discarded produce.
A few years ago Sofie was living in Australia and her sister sent her a photo of what she had found in a supermarket dumpster. Sofie wondered if the same could be found in Australia. Sofie reports "What I found was an insane amounts of good food. And then I have just never looked back since. In the beginning it was a kind of treasure hunt for me. Now it has evolved in to an everyday activism lifestyle for me"
Sofie returened to Denmark, continued dumpster diving and in 2023, Sofie's activism blew up on international media where a number of global news outlets ran stories abut her, highlighting that her annual food shopping bill was 80 Eu (£70 $90).
Sofie started off just salvaging fresh produce from bins but quickly realised she could find most of her weekly shop discarded in waste
Watch the portrait's story below
This video shows the painting process, and tells some of Sofie's story.
