[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Urban Foraging- Freegans (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 9/11/2007 11:48:03 AM EDT
 Janet Kalish, center, with an item she collected during a New York City trash tour for people interested in becoming freegans -- anti-consumerists who, in the words of one advocate, are "opting out of capitalism in any way that we can." 'Freegans' are a growing subculture that has opted out of capitalism by cutting spending habits and living off consumer waste. By Erika Hayasaki, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 11, 2007 NEW YORK -- For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery store. Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at four-star restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent. Photo Gallery Freegan trash tourOn this afternoon, she thawed a slab of pate that she found three days before its expiration date in a dumpster outside a health food store. She made buttery chicken soup from another health food store's hot buffet leftovers, which she salvaged before they were tossed into the garbage. Nelson, 51, once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble. Tired of representing a multimillion dollar company, she quit in 2005 and became a "freegan" -- the word combining "vegan" and "free" -- a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste. Though many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they believe waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices. "We're doing something that is really socially unacceptable," Nelson said. "Not everyone is going to do it, but we hope it leads people to push their own limits and quit spending." Nelson used to spend more than $100,000 a year for her food, clothes, books, transportation and a mortgage on a two-bedroom co-op in Greenwich Village. Now, she lives off savings, volunteers instead of works, and forages for groceries. She garnishes her salad with tangy weeds picked from neighbors' yards. She freezes bagels and soup from the trash to make them last longer. She sold her co-op and bought a one-bedroom apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, about an hour from Manhattan by bike. Her annual expenditures now total about $25,000. "I used to have 40 work blouses," said Nelson, sipping hot tea with mint leaves and stevia, a sweet plant she picked from a community garden. She shook her head in shame. "Forty tops, just for work." Freeganism was born out of environmental justice and anti-globalization movements dating to the 1980s. The concept was inspired in part by groups like "Food Not Bombs," an international organization that feeds the homeless with surplus food that's often donated by businesses. Freegans are often college-educated people from middle-class families. Adam Weissman, whose New York group Freegan.info has been around for about four years, lives with his father, a pediatrician, and mother, a teacher. The 29-year-old is unemployed by choice, taking care of his elderly grandparents daily and working odd jobs when he needs to. The rest of his time is spent furthering the freegan cause, he said, which is "about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can." Freegans troll curbsides for discarded clothes and ratty or broken furniture, which they repair to furnish their homes. They trade goods at flea markets. Some live as squatters in abandoned buildings, or in low-rent apartments on the edges of the city, or with family and friends. In recent years, Internet sites like Meetup.com have posted announcements for trash tours in Seattle, Houston and Los Angeles and throughout England. Some teach people how to dumpster-dive for food, increasing the movement's popularity. At least 14,000 have taken the trash tour for groceries over the last two years in New York. Another site, Freegankitchen.com, offers lessons for cooking meals from food found in dumpsters, such as spaghetti squash salad. Though recycling clothes and furniture doesn't strike most people as unusual, combing through heaps of trash for food can be unthinkable to many. One recent night, Weissman and Nelson led a trash tour through New York for about 40 experienced and first-time diggers, including college students, a high school teacher, a taxi driver and a former investment banker. One veteran handed out plastic gloves. An employee at D'Agostino's supermarket in Midtown Manhattan had carried out the garbage minutes earlier. The clear plastic bags lining the gum-stained sidewalk bulged with bruised peaches, discolored eggplants, day-old poppy seed bagels and imitation crabmeat. Careful not to rip the bags and risk angering store managers by creating a mess, some unknotted the ties and sifted through the garbage with bare hands. The bittersweet scent of cilantro, bananas and bread drifted into the air. Two women who worked next door at a nail salon came outside and stared. A few first-time tour-takers stood away from the group, looking self-conscious. "We encourage people who have never opened a bag before, just try it," Nelson told the group. "Go ahead." A few began filling backpacks and plastic bags with food that looked fresh enough to eat: heads of lettuce, tubs of party dip, baby arugula salad mix, avocados, shiny red and green apples, corn on the cob -- mere scraps in the estimated 50 million pounds of food that New York throws away each year, including at least 20 million pounds that go to the poor. Whoa, someone found the soy milk!" said Cindy Rosin, 31, a freelance graphics designer. "Good find." One person pulled a bag of Purina dog chow from the pile. Another found a bunch of grapes. Photo Gallery Freegan trash tourTwo men in dark dress slacks, button down shirts and shiny shoes approached the trash tourists. "Pardon me, what is this?" one asked. "Vegetable justice?" "It's over-consumerism," said Gracie Janove, 19, an anthropology student with a crescent moon pendant hanging around her neck. Janove, who participated in her first dumpster dive during a trip to France, frequently searches the trash of New York bakeries for pastries and the garbage of grocery stores for fruit. The two men walked away, laughing. D'Agostino's, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods -- freegans' most popular dumpster diving sites -- donate edible food to agencies that prepare it for the poor, according to their spokespeople. But freegans and food experts say a large amount of edible food still gets thrown away. Smaller businesses don't always have agreements with food banks, they say, or they have not taken time to donate. "We have found canned goods, completely wrapped pastas," said Nelson, who recently salvaged piles of parsley, lettuce, onions and a potted plant from a Whole Foods' garbage. Sometimes grocery stores don't sell food because there was an error in the processing, and though the product may be edible, it is the wrong color or shape, said Beth Osborne Daponte, a senior research scholar at the Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies who served on the Hunger in America 2006 task force. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans create 245 million tons of waste a years, about 12% of it food. Much of the food that stores throw out is still edible at the time of its expiration date. "We shouldn't be wasting as much as we do," Daponte said. But, she added, "to go dumpster diving, you also have to be willing to take the risk. Some of the food might be great. Some might be contaminated." Supermarket officials say food found in their trash should not be eaten. "Food items are disposed of because they are inedible or not otherwise safe to donate," said Ashley Hawkins, a spokeswoman for Whole Foods. The store's guidelines about what is edible, Weissman said, may be unrealistic, adding that at home, people wouldn't throw away a banana with a few brown spots. As Nelson and Weissman helped guide the scavengers to their next stop on the trash tour, a D'Agostino's employee brought out a big bag of doughy, plump, sweet-smelling bagels. The experienced freegans glanced at the bag and kept walking. Instead they led the group across the street to Daniel's Bagels, voted one of the best bagel shops in New York by one online site. "We're picky freegans," said Deirdre Rennert, who would not reveal her place of work because of the stigma attached to living off dumpster groceries. She once took home a salmon carcass from D'Agostino's trash and made ceviche, and admitted she was somewhat surprised she did not get sick. Daniel's had closed at 9 p.m. and its storefront was lined with black trash bags. The group sniffed and squeezed the bags. They opened the ones that felt soft and smelled of bread fresh from the oven. They discovered pounds of bagels: onion, pumpernickel, cinnamon raisin, sesame, sourdough. "Usually you will find a bag that has got the coffee remains with the bagels," Rosin told the diggers. "If they are nice, they will separate them." Nelson scooped up two bags of bagels to freeze for later. A few doors down, on the outdoor patio of a swanky restaurant, people sipped glasses of wine over half-eaten platters of pasta and salad, mostly ignoring the trash diggers, waiting for busboys to take away their leftover food. Since she upended her lifestyle, Nelson has learned how much she can live without. She still buys toilet paper and food for her two cats. She hasn't bought clothes in three years. Nor has she set foot in a supermarket to purchase eggs, vegetables, fruit, bread or coffee. Sitting in her hardwood-floor apartment furnished mostly with remnants of her former life -- a sofa with slightly torn fabric, an elaborate collection of books -- she wore a plain T-shirt and faded dark jeans cut off below the knee. The place is decorated with a few items she found in the trash: a chair, CD rack, rug and headboard in her bedroom. Her cupboards were full of food she did not pay for: cake mix, turkey gravy, curry mix, sweet rice. The freezer contained oatmeal bread, lime and cucumber sorbet, tomato basil soup and bagels. Everything was retrieved from the trash. "Just because it's two or three days past its pull date, it's not like it's Cinderella's coach and it's going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight," she said. Last year, Nelson asked her family if she could make Thanksgiving dinner out of foraged food. They found the idea odd at first, but agreed, and ended up enjoying an elaborate feast. Nelson used to love browsing department stores or buying new books or shoes. Now she finds satisfaction recovering 20 rosemary-seasoned roasted chickens from a dumpster outside of the Gourmet Garage, or sharing conversation over a lunch made from garbage. She has never been happier. [email protected] |
Maybe they are just preparing themselves for life as it will be, since we keep running towards more socialism??  Under socialism/communism it will probably be a lot like that unless you want to wait in line for your food and stuff
|
|
I wonder if you burn more calories scavenging for other people's discards or growing your own garden and raising your own chickens? In a 'rich society' where people can afford to be wasteful, the 'fregans' can make a go of it. If times get hard, I think they're gonna be pretty hungry..... |
Beat me to it. They aren't rejecting capitalism so much as parasitizing it. And I'll bet they smell even worse than your average hippie. 
|
| Ever been to a college dorm dumpster after finals? You won't believe the amount of serviceable stuff you can find. Some of the rich kids throw stuff like TVs and furniture that still has lots of life left in them. It might be a bit on the Hippie side, but you'd be surprised. |
Sorry,I embrace useing stuff that others toss out but foodstuff that is tossed generally has something wrong with it and any place you toss it is going to make it worse . no Thanks! |
|
I have to agree with Rodent.Im pretty sure these persons are aware of the possible end results of their actions be it illness or arrest.If the owners of the shops dont have a problem with and there is no mess left Im fine with it. I think most people would be stunned to learn how much food is wasted in the grocery industry.Im not talking about food that has spoiled or been damaged.I routinely dumped all kinds of canned goods in the dumpster for many reasons.Sometimes the food simply did not show on inventory scans so out it went.Sometimes it had been left in the loading bay and had gotten wet(the cardboard case). We would cut the upc code off and dump it. That being said these people are fools to eat dairy or meat products from the dumpster.Jim |
Like pacifism, completely bankrupt, i.e. as you stated, dependant and supported by people who do not share their philosophy. |
Whoo hoo ! Me too! Dumpster diving is great. I can't tell you how much money I've made/saved DD'ing. (the IRS might be listening) 
|
|
I will piss my wife off by dumpster diving anywhere. BUT, holy crap, food is thrown away for a reason. There is no way that I would eat out of a dumpster unless I was homeless and broke. Was homeless once, actually, but still managed to buy damn groceries and gas for that matter. Making a statement with your lifestyle is beyond me. The same people buy thrift store clothes that are purposely mismatched so that you know that they bought them at a thrift store. I bet there isn't a poor person in the bunch. Only rich assholes ("six-figure salary at Barnes and Noble"---where did all of that cash go lady?) think like this. I feel superior to someone today. |
You know, I bet the Democrats would tax this it they thought about it. |
im with rodent, in my younger days i found a seal a meal in a dumpster, its not all bad, however for everyday living i would't scrounge food thats why i work |
I like how their anger is directed toward America and capitalism, while the real culprit behind edible food being thrown out is the .gov with all the restrictions on food donations, expiration dates pulled out of thin air, etc etc. And not to mention the legal climate businesses move in today. Imagine the lawsuit if someone gets sick if an employee 'gave' these bums some food that looked good but was unknowingly tainted and past its .gov-mandated prime.
|
No they are just a bunch of cheap as*es who refuse to spend a dime of their own money on food. BTW stop the hippie stuff. I have a son and daughter in law that I would call hippies but they are building a business and are working very hard to do so. And no they don't smell. |
They are just wannabees then  I worked every day beside hippies when I was working in Boulder, and they do smell. |
|
I don't have any issues with dumpster diving -- some of my best finds are when the local university closes for the summer...Great finds in furniture, appliances! However......dumpster diving for *food* is a whole new issue Ask these questions first: How do you know somebody didn't dump their old jug of Chlorodane in there? How do you know that food wasn't tossed because the refrigeration was off all weekend? How do you know the minimum wage worker who was tossing the trash doesn't have hepatitis? How do you know the rats that are climbing around in there don't have cholera? ....and on and on and on |
Dad and mom are supporting this habit |
Exactly, they are attempting to destroy a system the excesses of which they depend on for survival. |
|
Like many others, I've enjoyed hand-me-downs, used furniture and other useful items that were otherwise going to be discarded. However, I also draw the line at food. I'll risk out of date food that has been "under my control" in my pantry with a known history, but I will not risk opening up the trash bags of some restaurant to scavenge discarded food. If life circumstances were to take a decidedly negative downturn and one were forced into dumpster diving for food, that would be considered different. But these people are choosing to live a dangerous lifestyle when it would be cheaper and easier for them to just get a job and buy some safe food. Smart people do smart things and avoid stupid mistakes. Willfully choosing to eat discarded food with an unknown history that may or may not be poisoned, spoiled, mixed with contaminants etc is a stupid mistake waiting to happen. |
|
I've been very curious about the "Nothing New" movement (you buy nothing new (except for consumeables) for a year. No new clothes, car, electronics, etc. The sin I hate most is Gluttony, and it concerns more than food. Recklessly wasting resources, in nearly all forms, really irks me. As a manufacturing and distribution systems analyst, I've spend considerable time reducing all forms of waste. Good on people fore reusing serviceable materials. |
|
I get a kick out of the part where they pick out the nicest places in town to dumpster dive. They're still consuming the same way the did before, they're just being parasitic about it. They still crave the "finer" things even when they're digging through the trash. They may think they're some kind of vanguard of social activism but they're really just a rotten to the core as the society they are trying to shun. Let them come to a small, mid-western town and try to survive on trash and scraps. "Ewww! I can't believe how nasty the dumpster at Kroger's is tonight! The selection is just so proletarian! Maybe we should go down to the Kwikee Mart and see if they have anything." If they get hungry enough to scavenge a road kill possum (or a penguin), then they'll know how a large part of the world lives every day. If I had a bunch of Dorm Room Marxists digging through my trash while they are sitting on bank accounts that would make most of our heads spin, I'll guarantee they wouldn't like what they find. I see no useful survival skills being displayed by this bunch. Without the stores being open and wasting tons of resources, they'd be nowhere fast. Even in an "ideal Marxist society" they'd be outside the norm since they are capable but choose not to produce. Living on trash, indeed. J. |
You are correct sir! The reality is actually worse than my off-the-cuff comment....a little digging came up with this gem. This makes scrounging for vittles from a dumpster even *less* appetizing......yum yum Toxoplasmosis! (Tables don't translate well...sorry about the jumble) Table 1: Diseases transmitted from Norway rats to man Parasite…............Disease of Man.....................% rats carrying disease Helminths ………..Capillaria spp....Capillariasis.......................23 ………..Toxocara cati....Toxocariasis.......................15 ………..Hymenolepis nana....Rat tapeworm..............11 Bacteria ………..Leptospira spp....Leptospirosis....................14 ………..Listeria spp....Listeriosis.............................11 ………..Yersinia enterocolitica....Yersiniosis..............11 ………..Pasteurella spp....Pasteurellosis....................6 ………..Pseudomonas spp....Melioidosis....................4 ………..Coxiella burnetii (antibodies)....Q Fever........34 Protozoa ………..Cryptosporidium parvum....Cryptosporidiosis..63 ………..Toxoplasma gondii....Toxoplasmosis............35 Virus (antibodies) ………………..Hantavirus....Hantaan-fever....................4 Adapted from J.P.Webster and D.W.Macdonald (1995), Parasites of wild brown rats, Rattus norvegicus. Parasitology 109: 37-43. |
|
Don't count on all the dumpster divers telling the truth. Some real leftist anti-American all capitalism is bad types turn around and sell what they find. Buyer beware, some stuff doesn't come from where you think it came from. As for the gleaners, there still around. They pick crops farmers find there is no market for. Sometimes prices just crash. Then there is when the cannery just buys everything from overseas resulting long lines of farmers being told they do not want their trucks full of crops. |
I can understand why so much food is wasted, but it's still kind of disgusting that we waste so much. It doesn't bother me if someone is taking a chance eating dumpster food. I imagine the pickin's are pretty good in the nice parts of town. People get entitements not to eat out of the trash, I wouldn't mind seeing a few of them picking out of the trash. I wonder how long I could go without buying anything new. I would stop at food from trash though. A garden would be nice. |
|
I won't DD food, but I sure as HELL will garbage pick if I find myself in West Bloomfield or Bloomfield Hills or one of the other ritzy communities around here. Gots me a couch from a millionaire's home (no shit,but I happen to know them.. :D ), got a upright full size chest freezer that is only two years old. New CD player... Even found my friend a dog because the dog didn't match the womans new furniture!!!  -V |
|
If you ever get beyond the US borders you'll quickly see how wealthy we are as a country and how incredibly wasteful we are. I won't be dumpster diving any time soon, but in many 3rd world countries, the "Freegan" lifestyle is critical for survival. As much as many of us are disgusted by this Freegan practice, in a worst case scenario (ala extended SHTF), you might be faced with living similarly, especially if major supply chains break down, if live stock runs thin and if wild game is over hunted where you live. |
That isn't why these hippies are doing this. The only thing that lets these hippies do this is the fact that we as a nation can afford to toss out the things they want. |
