Would You, Could You Be a Freegan?

too extreme.

it might be the germ theory of disease talking.. but i think what’s touched a dumpster is spoiled.

I don’t think I could dive into a dumpster. Besides, the fact remains you’re living off someone else even if their castoffs. What happens if everyone is bad off? I would rather live as independently as I could and do for myself as much as I can.

I think this practice is gross! I have no problem if someone is inclined to dumpster dive an article that can be cleaned before using, but food, no way unless I was starving could I do it.

I would rather do any type of manual labor to earn money to put food on the table for my family, before I would willing do this.

I would do it if I needed to.

The truth is, good food and good things are thrown out in excess every day in America that would be quickly gobbled up by the starving poor of our country and others.

I dumpster dived back in college, and the experience was liberating. My favorite spot was a chocolate factory – and most of the yummy concoctions were still in their packaging, only thrown away because they were off-color and wouldn’t sell. Many grocery stores are forced to throw away an entire case of spaghetti sauce if just one bottle breaks.

My feelings? More power to them! It means less waste in our landfills and perfectly decent food (in jars, cans, and the like on many occasions) eaten – just as they were intended to be.

I’ve personally explored this (freeganism) and would do more of it if I would be able to find consistent resources for dumpster diving. Instead, I have found creative mooching (chiefly from work) to be the best- ie- whenever there’s leftover food- I’m there with baggies on hand to bring some home (and since I have a family of 6 on one income, no one thinks twice about letting me have the leftovers).

More on garbage picking- we do it all the time. Especially in the spring when college students leave tons of “merchandise” for garage sales. We store the stash until early fall- then sell it at a huge sale for returning/new students. We once made $2000. ‘Nuff said there!

We are a society of waste and excess – I think it’s a good thing that there are people willing to help use up what we’ve created and will otherwise go to waste – why would anyone think that is a bad thing?

I am also a huge advocate of taking home leftovers from meals at restaurants, heck, even when I’m at my mom’s, and she’s made one of her yummy dishes. I’ve been at a business lunch with some high-powered muckety muck, and taken home leftovers. None to my knowledge has ever raised an eyebrow, and why should they? I would be stupid to leave half of a delicious $30 filet and asparagus and hollandaise only to be thrown in the trash!

Laziness and sloth go hand in hand when a group devises a set of ideas that thwarts the proferred system and allows them to receive sustenance in any form from the excess of another.Basically,thy live outside the taxable population and devise schemes and dogma drivel to support lack of motivation.Perhaps they sould be taxed and investigated for subversion of ideals which are supported by the general populace.

Subversion? Sounds a bit extreme to me, but then I am still using a 5-drawer chest I picked up while curb shopping several years ago. I watched the produce manager throw away many pounds of bananas that were either singles or were very slightly riper than they like to sell. I asked if he would sell them to me, but he said their policy would not allow him to do that.

That kind of waste simply causes higher prices to customers, and makes me think that dumpster diving is not only ok, but a good idea!

I don’t know I could dumpster dive for food unless I was starving and had no money for any.
I think I would much rather put the effort into growing as much of my own food as possible – expand my garden etc. thereby eliminating using my vehicle and wasting gas for something I may or may not find…
I don’t know this part of it is just too weird.

As I live in NYC I am familiar with, though have not participated in, this culture. For those of you concerned about the food being dirty, this is often not the case. Most food is bagged and then thrown out. They don’t always just toss the oranges in with the coffee grinds so to speak like we would in our home kitchens. Many smaller businesses do this as well, such as a bagel store that tosses out pastries and bagels at the end of the day (this was a popular haunting ground for college students and the homeless alike).

Freegans, unfortunately while good intentioned, are not a sustainable culture. We should strive for a less wasteful consumer culture YES, absolutely. But their idea of “limiting involvement in the consumer economy” by living off someone else who does. . . well that doesn’t make any sense! Freegans by necessity are still dependent on consumer culture – and worse, they are actually dependent on a WASTEFUL consumer culture. If we weren’t wasteful what would they eat?

I think its best to work towards improving the system, not just excluding ourselves from it to clear our conscience.

I’m trying to raise funds for children’s cancer patients with my novel proceeds

http://www.trafford.com/06-1593

My position on dumpster diving is this.

It’s a ashame that these businesses that throw good food away are not better stewards of repossessing discarded food to the poor before it hits the dumpster.

My question is this: isn’t it illegal to go dumpster diving in the trash bin of a business? Won’t the business run you off? After all, if you scavange food from the trash bin, you don’t buy food from them.

I think it’s absurd. If the enviro-freaks want to live out of dumpsters, fine, but that’s not something I want to do, and if we all did it, the hippies would have nothing to eat. And not just because no one would be throwing stuff out, but because the economy would have imploded into a near non-existent state.

I would but here on the west coast, fruits & veggies are not packaged in plastic like they are on the east coast, so I would have to say no to those items. The other items, who’s to know if they have been tampered with.

I think it is too bad that many only want brand new items. It used to be easy to give away things that we didn’t want any more but still had life in them. Too much pride? On the other hand, I would not be willing to take food out of a dumpster—between lack of sanitation and lack of trust of what some jerk might drop into it, or the possibility of raths, there is no way I would subject my family to the risks.

Make “raths” into “rats”. To Diane, I don’t know if it is illegal to dumpster dive a business’s dumpster, but it certainly hurts their profitability and ability to stay in business. That hurts everyone.

Some food places here have aggreements with homeless shelters; at the end of the day, somebody from the shelter comes and picks up the leftover pastries, etc. There was a move to save the unopened milk and uneaten fruit left over from the elementary school lunches for the homeless, but some sort of govt. regulations wouldn’t allow that– they had to be thrown away. Not because of health issues, but just because they had been purchased for the school lunches…. THAT I consider terribly, sinfully wasteful.

There is nothing wrong with using others’ castoffs. Waste is a sin, remember? Reuse and gleaning are honorable means of providing for yourself. Pride is a poisonous product of an artificially glutted society. Conspicuous consumerism has replaced honor and virtue in America.
We used to dumpster dive in Burton Heights in Grand Rapids. We once got a carload of useable office supplies thrown out by a store going out of business. It was all a tax write-off for them.
What many people fail to realize is that the “poverty level” is a sham. Many people in this country earn well under $10. an hour. At forty hours a week, do the math. Raising the minimum wage isn’t the answer. It just makes everything more expensive.

I wouldn’t get my food from a restaurant’s or market’s dumpster or from an individual’s garbage can, but it has nothing to do with pride. I am fairly confident that trash receptacles are frequent hosts to rodents and other vermin (roaches & such), not to mention the invisible viruses & bacteria. I don’t care if I was paid to dig in the garbage, the health of my family comes before the health of my pocket book.

If dumpster divers would worked & earned $ instead of digging in the trash, I wonder if they would do better economically? Anyone have any info on that?

Hi, I use freecycle. You sign up for the freecycle closest to your home. You get emails for items being given away for free, & items people want. Everything from food to kitchen appliances are given away for free. Loretta

As a manager of a large chain grocer/retailer I can clarify the issues of grocery stores throwing away edible food products or damaged merchandise.
We are not allowed to give away over-ripe produce or near “out of date” food products because of all the assorted liability issues that can arise from this practice.
We are allowed and we do donate packaged food items that have been found in damaged cases…such as spaghetti sauce,as long as the remaining items in the case have not had their packaging damaged.

Why don’t you ask someone who grew up being forced by their parent/s to be “Fregan”, how this lifestyle affects children? It’s chilling to think of a child being lifted into a trash compactor to retrieve “dinner”.
It’s one thing to chose to do this as an adult but quite another to impose it on children, & believe me, this happens.

there is a guy in knoxville and that is his job….he makes about 65000.00 by doing this….and plus no taxes…go dumpster divers…i wld do it only i am so old i might get in one and never get out..lol

As a bunch of fresh college grads beginning our own businesses, my friends and I often resorted to dumpsters for party foods. We would set strict rules–no opened food or freshly baked foods, etc. But unopened two-liters of soda? Bags of chips? Sure. We had a great many parties with no food costs.

I personally have a large garden and would like to expand it, but I used to live in the east and I can tell you that many greegans do have full time jobs, it’s just too expensive to live there regardless.

sorry, meant to say ‘freegans’.

Couldn’t do it myself. I’m not adverse to taking the odd useful mitem from a dumster, but only if it looks relatively OK and clean. But food, no sorry couldn’t do it unless i was starving to death. Better to try and live a frugal lifestyle by making the most of the food you cook yourself.:)