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Freegans get by just fine on others' castoffs

Posted at 3:23 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Changed your light bulbs, gone vegetarian, sold your car, but still feel like your consumer impact is intolerable? It may be time to go freegan and learn to live off the waste that others throw out. Freegans gain most of their possessions and sustenance by foraging -- for clothes, for furniture, and for grocery-store food that is slightly bruised or just past its expiration but still entirely edible. And there's plenty to choose from: the U.S. EPA estimates that some 12 percent of the 245 million tons of waste annually generated by Americans is food. With roots in the environmental-justice and anti-globalization movements, the freegan subculture has distaste for the waste, environmental harm, and labor practices that accompany the corporate world; says one member, it's "about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can."

source: Los Angeles Times

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Free Food

I still relish the memories of the free (and delicious) chocolate I once received from a house mate which was found in a dumpster of a small chocolate company. It was in a nice box and was sooooo good! Even my colleagues at work still talk about it. We also made a lot of very tasty Guacamole with avocados we found in the back of a supermarket dumpster. Too soft for the customer I suppose - perfect for Guacamole.

If you look at our supermarkets you cannot be really surprised. Food that does not look perfect is usually not displayed. Fresh food "looks" nowhere better than in North American supermarkets. I once was told that throwing the food away rather than giving it away has some sort of a tax benefit. I wonder.

Karsten PolluteLessDotCom

by PolluteLessDotCom at 12:47 PM on 12 Sep 2007

Anyone else see the contradiction??

First of all, everyone please understand that I think that the freegan response to the current economic situation in most of the world is creative, intelligent and revolutionary.

However, doesn't it seem a bit short sighted to on the one hand say, '"it's "about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can."' but the whole system of the freegan requires that capitalism exsists in its current form...ie...if no one was being so wasteful and throwing very useable stuff away, then the freegans wouldn't have anything to eat, wear, sleep on..

So, perhaps a better solution for long-term sustainability would be to become as self-sufficient as possible...instead of living off the cast-offs of a system that we would all like to see change.

by shawnelyce at 12:53 PM on 12 Sep 2007

Completely agreed

This is mostly about reducing the waste that currently occurs in our society. Ideally folks would not own what they do not need or what cannot be recycled, reuse what they can, recycle most of what they cannot reuse, compost anything organic, and throw away very little.
Freeganism (which I call dumpster diving) means also not being shy about collecting, using and eating what is not necessarily new and/or freshly purchased. This is something we can work on as a society. It is not a new movement; one person's trash has been another person's treasure for a long time. The activity just received a new name.

Karsten PolluteLessDotCom

by PolluteLessDotCom at 4:31 AM on 13 Sep 2007

Freegan

Could someone please tell me exactly what capitalism has to do with waste?

by tellitlikeitis at 5:06 PM on 13 Sep 2007

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