Would you scavenge your food from somebody else’s garbage? A group of people who call themselves freegans do this (and more) every day. This video describes their methods:
The current issue of Newsweek (dated 01 Oct 2007) features a story by Raina Kelley describing the month she spent living as a freegan:
I had nine rules: I would be a vegan who bought nothing but local and/or organic food. I would use only ecofriendly transportation, cut my electricity bill in half and erase my carbon footprint. My mantra would be “Recycle, reuse, renew,” while never forgetting to reflect on my impact on the Earth before acting. Any money I saved would go into a “Freedom Savings Account” and be used toward allowing me to quit my 9-to-5 as soon as possible.
That’s tough work for an eBay-loving, omnivorous, cigarette-smoking shopaholic. But I was determined to change my profligate ways. I would transform myself into an eco-princess — a green goddess.
That’s not exactly what happened.
Kelley’s article includes excerpts from the diary she kept during this experiment. The posts at her blog, Freegan Girl, are more forthcoming than those in the magazine, however. In the same issue of Newsweek, Jerry Adler writes about the noble scavenger on the living-room couch, offering a sympathetic yet critical look at freegan culture:
[I]t’s hard to argue with their outrage, or their broader critique of the excesses and wastefulness of postindustrial consumerist culture…But that’s not the same thing — in some ways the opposite — as counseling people to drop out of the economy altogether. The hungry African doesn’t care what kind of soap you use; he just wants you to help him eat. The freegans, most of whom are educated and capable of contributing to the economy, aren’t sharing the surplus wealth of the West with those who are destitute by circumstance rather than choice. They are competing with them for it.
The freegans’ Edenic myth is seductive, but there is no way to put the technological genie back in the bottle, or the demographic one either. Six billion people, however much we may deplore their impact on the environment, cannot sustain themselves by foraging for nuts and tubers. The way out isn’t backward, but forward, by using our wisdom, and even our much criticized technology, to forge a better and more humane society.
I found both articles fascinating. But while I sympathize with freegan ideals, and support their efforts, this brand of extreme frugality is not for me. I’ll work to reduce my role as a consumer in other ways.
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I may not agree with what they’re doing (pulling food from the trash), but I do agree that way too much food is just wasted in this country. And if their actions bring that fact to light and causes a change, then that’s certainly a good thing. After all, it’s not like they’re eating leftovers just tossed in a Hefty bag. They’re looking for safe foods; foods they are simply thrown away for whatever reason. (Such as a bakery only offers fresh bread, etc.)
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[...] Newsweek by way of getrichslowly.org a well-written, gentle criticism of the Trashifarian movement: The freegans, most of whom are [...]
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I followed the posts in the freegan blog. The posts were interesting and funny. I was dismayed at the amount of perfectly good food that is thrown out by grocery stores. I know here in my neck of the woods there is a feed the hungry program that goes out to the gorcery stores and collects food that is perfectly good but can’t be sold by the store due to some policy or another. In my opinion we ought to be doing a much better job og matching excess goods to people who need them.
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Great post as ususal.
I think living off the waste streams of society is pretty cool for those who want to. As someone who used to pick up day old food from a bakery every Sunday for our church and soup kitchens, I can understand the amount of waste our society creates. But the tone of the freegan girl wears me down. I’ve looked into freeganism before, but that was because, as a fan of efficiency and dumpster diving I thought it was cool… not because I was a self loathing, feel-guilty-about-everything person trying to buy my salvation with penitence.
Was it just me, or did reading her wear anyone else out too? It was like she was afraid of and hated everything. I wouldn’t want to live 30 days like that. Sadly, it sounds like she might live her whole life that way.
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HAHA! a “freedom savings account” or as its more commonly known as, the “retirement account”. If she wants to quit her job so bad why doesn’t she go work for a non-profit enviromental group? What is quitting her 9-5 going to do to save the world?
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Well —
So she saved $1200 in a month by not shopping and eating free? What’s wrong with the rest of us that we keep going to the stores? Here’s the ticket to getting rich (insert sarcasm)
I noticed she didn’t bother to set aside watching dvds during her freegan month, since she wanted to kill her hubby for the remote. So much for reducing her electricity footprint.
Sorry, I just have a hard time with this sort of thing. I do agree that a lot of food is wasted in this country — shameful amounts. I also really do agree with living gently on the earth. And I DON’T think that living frugally is necessarily equivalent with being miserly.
But dang — she was setting herself up to be miserable. Because she treated being freegan as an external thing — she didn’t take it internally at all. It’s like people who go to church because it’s correct, not because they love God.
The simple truth of it is we could ALL stand to live more ecologically friendly. But we don’t have to be miserable to do so. It comes down to choices — choosing to eat more mindfully, choosing to wash clothes, dishes or our bodies more mindfully. Choosing to shop more mindfully. That doesn’t mean you have to lay a guilt trip on yourself every time you use a drop of water.
If you were to go back 150 years and ask people if they wouldn’t prefer to have running water rather than a bucket from the well, I really doubt they’d have to think very hard about it. Technology and progress aren’t the problem — taking them for granted is the problem. We should be grateful stewards of all the conveniences we have the luxury of living with.
I think this lady must have been a pretty stout consumer before her freeganism.
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I believe you can do more to change society by changing your shopping habits and attempting to gain social and economic power. If you just raid dumpsters, you’re on the outside and you have no real power to change things. In fact, you’re leaving things up to the people on the inside. If you really want to change what’s being sold, starting buying the stuff that’s made the way you want.
I spent 30 minutes at a toy store this weekend, just trying to find birthday gifts that were not made or plastic or made in China, for example.
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I wish I were gutsy enough to do something like this. Not necessarily looting from trash, but at least talking to grocery stores about when they get rid of their almost-expired but not actually bad stuff. Maybe paying half-price for it. They make money on food they weren’t going to sell, I get cheaper food.
As I said, though, still lacking in the guts. I don’t like cold calling.
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“Six billion people, however much we may deplore their impact on the environment, cannot sustain themselves by foraging for nuts and tubers. The way out isn’t backward, but forward, by using our wisdom, and even our much criticized technology, to forge a better and more humane society.”
The thing we have to watch out for, is building a technology and economic infrastructure that can comfortably support six billion people–except that by the time it’s implemented, it’s comfortably supporting two billion and supporting twenty billion more in extreme poverty … Human population does seem to expand to the limits of the available resources, no matter what those limits are.
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While I know there is far too much waste in our society and have had no qualms collecting furniture and other items off the street (if they are in decent shape) I’ve never been able to get over my food-in-the-trash taboo, so this isn’t something for me.
Of course the waste isn’t just at the supermarket level, it’s also at the farm level – vegetables that aren’t the “right” shape or size, or that have been damaged by machinery is also thrown out. Agnes Varda made an award-winning documentary about this a couple of years ago called “The Gleaners & I”.
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Once when I was moving apts, during my shopaholic period, I threw away a lot of reusable, recyclable, or sellable “crap” in the dumpsters behind my building. Within a day I noticed nearly all of the stuff I “trashed” was gone. I even saw one of my neighbors carting the microwave I threw out (which was only a year old but I wanted a built in microwave instead–ha). At first I was weirded out my neighbors would be using my stuff, wearing my clothes, shoes, etc . . . but I now realize an important lesson, just because it’s thrown away doesn’t make it trash. A new pair of jeans with tags in a macy’s bag is valuable but if you take those same new jeans, cut off the price tag, and put them in a hefty garbage bag out on the street it’s seen as almost worthless.
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“The way out isn’t backward, but forward, by using our wisdom, and even our much criticized technology, to forge a better and more humane society.”
Is technology really going to rescue us and solve our problems? Doesn’t it seem technology started the problem to begin with? Wisdom yes, technology – I don’t think so.
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[...] may be a little extreme. You could always spend your days scavenging for food, even though you can easily afford it. This will help you prepare for the absolute worst case [...]
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Mark, I don’t think technology started the problem– non-technological societies, monkeys, mammals of all types, fish, invertebrates, everything down to the cellular level has to eat. Everything eats. Everything reproduces. Everything will reproduce until it hits the limit of what it can eat, and then a little bit more.
Wisdom will solve the problem, yes, but technology has a big role to play. High-yield grains, fertilizing schemes that don’t screw up water quality or the soil, more efficient land use, domesticated plants, it’s all technology and all part of the toolbox.
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The freegans, most of whom are educated and capable of contributing to the economy, aren’t sharing the surplus wealth of the West with those who are destitute by circumstance rather than choice. They are competing with them for it.
Not so. First, there’s a very short window of opportunity to grab day-old food in the dumpster, so they would have to be ripping it out of the hands of the homeless for that to be true.
Second, working-class people are the ones who are throwing out a lot of the perfectly good non-food items. They won’t accept “sharing the surplus wealth” because wearing and using used stuff would in their minds prove that they’re poor. This is Exhibit A for the truth of an ancient proverb– “the Devil wipes his ass with a poor man’s pride.”
What this is actually about is culture being the original sacred cow of western civilization. Oh, spending money stupidly (in this case, to replace perfectly good things) is part of your cultural habits. Guess we can’t criticize that.
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The Newsweek article I think very aptly describes an axim I have thought on for many years: The so-called Good Old Days were anything but Good. As a corollary, People who are wistful for the good old days, generally lack sufficient understanding of the day-to-day mechanics of said days.
I like that the author mentions Jared Diamond. I highly recommend Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” and also “Collapse” for anyone who seeks to have a better understanding of the way our world works today.
Finally, I fully agree that the freegan girl suffers from an affliction that affects far to many otherwise intelligent well-meaning people. I am referring of course to “Liberal Guilt”. People, Its not your personal fault that there are people starving in Africa, even if you own an ipod, which, let’s face it, is basically the pinnacle of hundreds of years of achievement built on colonial oppression the world over. You should feel bad for them of course, and do what you can to help, but you don’t need to reject your entire consumerist society. Just turn off your lights when you aren’t using them for crying out loud. Be conservative with energy and water. Don’t live to excess. But don’t go on misbegotten boycott binges, it really doesn’t do anybody any real good. Not you, not the guy who’s couch you’re living on, and certainly not the poor starving Africans.
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Between my freshman and sophomore years of college I worked at a Sam’s Club as a grocery section floor walker. One of my responsibilities was to throw away expired food. Even food that was dated the current date had to be discarded. I used to throw away dozens upon dozens of loaves of bread, cakes, muffins, and pies from the bakery. These items were not stale, but soft and edible, but the sell by date had come and we were required to get rid of them. The same goes with milk. I must have gotten rid of hundreds of gallons in just the few months I was there. I routinely consume milk a day or two past the sell by date provided it passes the smell test. I asked why we couldn’t donate this food to a soup kitchen or shelter. The response I got bothered me. If one person were to get ill, then it would have legally been the store’s fault since the food was past date. I can attest that this food had not spoiled, but because of the potential legal ramifications it was discarded rather than consumed or donated. I was also told that if I took any of it I would be fired.
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Well said, icup.
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Scott is correct. I know of a food pantry that in Central Florida that used to get items from the local grocery chain a while ago, but the chain put a stop to it for that precise reason – threat of lawsuit.
So, thank the litigious opportunists and their scumbag trial lawyers for their contribution to this problem.
Also, a hearty “hear hear” for icup’s comment
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I work at Office Depot. When someone brings something back and that packaging is badly damaged, the cashiers often designate it “damaged and defective” Some of this stuff (mostly electronics) gets sent back to the manufacturer. Most of it, however, is spray painted red and thrown away. I go dumpster diving in my own store’s dumpster at night. I can’t take the stuff out of the store because then I’m stealing (according to company policy), but once it’s in the dumpster, it’s fair game. I’ve gotten desk accessories a huge bulletin board and even once a slightly torn chair.
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Way back when I was in college I came across a guy, actually he was my girlfriend’s Dad, who lived by the freegan principles cited above. He scavenged the dumpsters behind the finer restuarants in Pacific Beach and brought home many a meal of veggies thrown away because they were about to spoil. I was pretty sure he was really just a weirdo at the time but he did die rich. Of course, he still died. I still think of him though because he did what he did despite the opinions of others.
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“The Newsweek article I think very aptly describes an axim I have thought on for many years: The so-called Good Old Days were anything but Good. As a corollary, People who are wistful for the good old days, generally lack sufficient understanding of the day-to-day mechanics of said days.”
I think the freegans are an echo of the back-to-the-land movement, albeit a slightly weirder version. Back-to-the-landers at least rejected modern society by actually leaving it rather than just living off its waste.
I’ve read that the idealization of the pastoral, agrarian lifestyle (specifically the images we associate with Christmas) started in the industrial revolution, when peasant farmers moved into cities. Prior to that there wasn’t really much to idealize about the past because your parents’ and grandparents’ lives were much like your own–they may have even lived in the same house.
I think it’s fairly natural to think wistfully about the past, mostly because the past we think about has had most of the negatives and boring bits filtered out. But I also think there’s a great deal of hypocrisy involved in any movement like freeganism which attempts to condemn our society but only reject some parts of it.
The back-to-the-landers, when push came to shove, were not willing to give up modern medicine. From the sounds of it freegans (or at least this one) aren’t even willing to give up television, let alone move to Africa and actually do something for the world’s poor.
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I should point out that there is a movement of people who do try to live ‘off the grid’ and those are people I highly respect (although I could never do it myself).
I saw an episode of 30 days (from the guy who did Supersize Me), that showed you what it was like to live off the grid. Growing your own vegetables, driving a car powered by cast off deep fryer oil collected from restaurants, no electric lights, composting toilet, cold showers with biodegradeable homemade soap, etc etc. It was a very eye opening episode, giving you tips on how to cut down your own carbon footprint without getting in your face about it.
I highly recommend it.
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My sister paid off her credit card debt by “gleaning” from grocery stores. She actually had an arrangement with the produce managers of her local grocery stores: they would hold expired stuff for her to come pick up.
She got enough to feed her family of 5, can and freeze leftovers, feed several friends too. It wasn’t exactly dumpster diving but close.
My Mom did the same thing and gets bread and all kinds of stuff from a grocery store and leftover bread from an Atlanta Bread Company.
My favorite spot is the Barnes and Noble dump. Free books
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I do think there’s a place in our society for scavengers. We could have a much more efficient use of resources if more people were willing to find ways to use more kinds of trash. There used to be people who collected and used rags, old furniture, “pure”, bones, and all sorts of other things we now put in the landfill.
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[...] talked about Freegans, which are basically freaks who go through other people’s trash in order to find food. – [...]
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[...] talked about Freegans, which are basically freaks who go through other people’s trash in order to find food. – [...]
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wow. This is great. I was just telling my boyfriend that we waste enough food as a world to feed the hungry. This is great that thier are others out there. I have done it yet. but this gives me inspiration.
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People used to scavenge plenty during the Great Depression!
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Dumpster diving for food by choice…
People who call themselves freegans take frugality to the extreme — going through garbage for food,…
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Though I am not a full freegan as of yet I must say what I read on “Freegan Girls” blog was kind of rediculous in the sense that one should not expect their body to take the giant leap to veganism so quickly if they have been metabolically used to a meat filled diet…its common nutritional knowledge that imediately bashes her study…she should have became “vegan” way before “freegan” so she could have done it the right way. Many freegans are actually meagans who will receive meat from people who bought it or hunted it whatever instead of huting for or buying it themselves. One more important fact is many freegans try to “farm” or grow vegetables and not just dumpster dive.
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The problem folks are having with this is the word “trash”. Commercial store “trash” is usually not packed up the same as your residential trash. At home, you toss everything, from kleenex you used to blow your nose, to chicken bones, to moldy cheese to old underwear, into the your trash, sometimes in a nasty trash container with god knows what growing in it.
But in commercial stores, they have to follow a health code, or else they could get shut down. Their trash cans must be fairly clean. Their food must be handled cleanly. Even when it’s thrown out, it’s not like it’s tossed in the normal trash. The deli department tosses their stuff in their own trash bins/bags. Bakery the same. Produce, the same. Each department bags up their own “trash”, which as these people are pointing out, usually is not trash in the sense we typically think of. It’s merely things that are “past their prime” per health code or that store’s personal ethic (EG: a fresh bakery would get rid of day-old bread … it’s still perfectly good, it just doesn’t meet their “baked that day” standard anymore). This “trash” is tossed into clean trash bags, which in residential cases act like a barrier to keep nasty stuff in, but in this commercial sense keeps nasty stuff out and protects the perfectly good stuff on the inside. Again, some of what they pulled out was still in the original wrappings. The produce they pulled out would get inspected and cleaned, just as if you were buying it normally.
It’s just the word “trash” that’s throwing a negative light on this. It’s merely “food reclamation”. Think of it this way, if you harvest food on a farm, you run the risk of it being spoiled, contaminated with god knows what, who knows what kinds of insects eating it. You run the same “risk” when reclaiming “trash” food from commercial stores.
Also, stores that notice this pattern (the night-time clean up folks, not the store owners) will usually take care to pack up the “good stuff” in its own bags, so real trash is kept separate from good things. The average working joe looks favorably on folks like this “fighting the system” and making the most out of what they can find, so they’ll take a little extra effort to help out.
Also note that these folks were NOT digging in the back alley of a restaurant’s trash. They were digging in trash that came from a corner super-market … produce, baked goods, etc. These were not half-eaten, cooked meals they were digging through, which WOULD be a very real health hazard.
Also, the reporters prejudice against this activity was sort of showing through on this report. Even though it was generally a positive report, you could just tell that she wasn’t all too enthusiastic about this assignment.
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I was researching Freegans to answer a question on my blog and ran into your site. I like what you’re doing on your blog – very nice work.
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I don’t know if I could do this–maybe. But here’s an idea–all those grocery stores tossing out perfectly good packaged fresh food?
GIVE IT TO THE FOOD PANTRIES. DAILY.
There. I just solved two huge problems in this country with one idea: grocery waste, and starving Americans who don’t have enough money to be able to buy food.
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