Freegan behavior: living off throwaways
Would you consider yourself a freegan? If you pick up items that are being thrown out with the trash, then you are a freegan. If you eat the free samples at Costco and consider that a meal, then you are a freegan.
The urban dictionary defines a freegan as:
Somebody who abstains from contributing to the economy and salvages society’s wasted food and resources rather than purchase more themselves.
I had a bad opinion of freegans when I first heard about them, I saw them as being thiscloseto homeless and living a life that my brother used to live. Living in abandoned homes, stairwells and crashing at friend’s places. Eating gross looking food that was left-over in the fridge or garbage and spending as little money as possible – which came across to me as being a leech or at the very least, cheap.
Over time that idea has changed and I realize that I do some things that are freegan-like. Like when I pulled the dresser from the dumpster so I wouldn’t have to buy a new one. But it doesn’t stop at just products, freegans also pick up good looking food that they view as good food that shouldn’t go to waste.
@freegan, who posts their finds on twitter, and gives what they do find to the local shelter, laments that “Only 10% or so of stores have outside bins to glean fresh fruits and vegetables from–the rest destroy w/inside compactor.”
Other freegans who glean from the discards of grocery stores and restaurants do make some delicious looking food –Avocado Mango Mint Salad with Plum Chutney is one meal that Waste Not, Want Green has pulled together from the dumpster.
I also found that freegan.info takes the definition a step further to include not just people searching for food but also:
‘œPeople who are concerned so deeply with the social and ecological impact of economic over-consumption that they choose to buy and work as little as possible and, instead, to live directly off the massive waste created by our modern society.’
These people have jobs, homes and families. They are the scavengers of the American culture, taking the discarded and forgotten and making it their own, getting that last bit of nourishment or life from it when we have decided none could be found.
I am in total support of this and I think it is great that people are able to ‘œlive’ off of our throwaways with their creativity.
Have I ever dived for food? No. Have I ever eaten food that was dived? Yes. My grandfather was a diver after he retired and one of his stops was a bakery near his home, since he had a sweet tooth. He even grabbed some extras for us grand-kids. Mom was hesitant at first and always checked the expiration dates, but we determined if we would eat it, based on whether is was stale or not. I have to say that my aversion to coconut covered marshmallows are due to this history, they never looked good to me.
—-
Dawn C. is site owner of FrugalforLife.com where this is a repost from: The Freegan Consumer Behaviour. Dawn resides in Colorado with her spouse, Teri, of 12 years. You can follow her on Twitter – It’s like a party line for instant messaging.
Photo credit: Flickr/boojee.
Mustn’t forget freecycle.org!
There’s a lot of waste in this society. Freegans are cool – and I know a few. They also give back to society in many ways – perhaps not monetarily, but through work – or by giving away what they get for free to someone who needs it….
Then there’s that category of Freegans that bug me. The opportunists that live off other people’s hard work and generosity. They should go get a job.
I’ve eaten lunch on free samples many times at Wholefoods.
I know lots of people who embrace certain aspects of this lifestyle, myself included, and I think it’s a great thing. There’s so much waste in this society. If each of us save something from the dump once in awhile, it can only help our planet and our pocketbooks. As for those who live off the generosity of others without giving anything back, that I cannot condone.
We have some strategies that are “freegan” in nature.
We have an elaborate clothing sharing program with some friends- kids clothes rarely go for more than one or two seasons before they are grown out of– so we rotate with those that have kids older and younger. The main rule of our group is no selling clothes. They may be given freely to charity but no tax write off (most give to our church’s clothing closet when done). Some seasons we can get by with just purchasing underwear and shoes/sneakers for the kidlets.
We are not ashamed to pick up something that still has use from the curb. We go nuts gathering “merchandise” from the curb in the spring when college students are leaving town; store it in our garage over the summer- then have a big BOFFO sale the first weekend the kids come back. One year (our biggest so far- and we have not been able to repeat it), we made $2K. We had several kitchen sets (tables/chairs), sets of dishes, room sized rugs, storage crates, etc– all from the garbage.
We refurbish furniture and such we want for ourselves. Our dining room is all from the side of the road- a china cabinet, two buffets, and table/chairs. My hubby’s clothing is kept in an armoire we scored. Down in our basement playroom, kids toys and videogames are kept in a big bureau we found. My sewing room has two roadside dressers I cleaned up for fabric storage.
The main thing about freegan living is not hoarding- using what you have and need, then letting go of the excess. In our small home, we HAVE to do this.
Great post, Dawn. There is a whole society of freegans in Paris that lives in the catacombs. They dumpster dive for groceries in the wealthiest parts of the city and live pretty well considering that everything the consume has been discarded by someone else.
I wouldn’t consider myself a freegan, even though I’ve spent a few years subsisting on food rescued from a dumpster while I volunteered with Food Not Bombs. I try to recycle things as much as possible – book shelves, coffee tables, etc. – but I really believe there’s nothing revolutionary about body odor or moldy bread. Guess that makes me part of the bourgeoisie. Oh, well.
My family calls this “the bob gene”. My grandfather, bob, grew up during the depression and always grabbed things people were getting rid of on the side of the road. I’ve gotten a futon, an arm chair and a “new” bike this way.
I also worked in a restaurant for years where at the end of the day bread goods like bagels were thrown away and once a week about a half a gallon of ice cream was dumped for cleaning. I’d always just arrange to have friends around to eat the ice cream. Less waste and my friends then came back and actually purchased food at other times.
It has been wonderful reading your responses.
I watched a documentary a while ago that showed the European grazers that go into fields and pick up the leftovers as well as the city dwellers that pick up unfinished food that people leave behind.
There is a tremendous amount of waste in America, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t find a way to make good use of it. That’s the whole idea of creating wealth – you take something and make something out of it that has more value.
Here is one example from my life – scrap wood. I heat my home with wood, and in my limited experience picking up scrap wood from the Cheyenne area, I am convinced that there is no end to the scrap wood one can make use of.
If we all found a way to make use of the waste in the world, there would be abundance for everyone, and no one would go wanting.
Clair
Thanks for referencing my post. Funny that we have the same name (Dawn). Even more funny is that after NYC, I moved to Colorado.
-On the note of coincidences… when in NYC, I lived 3 blocks from Freegan.info headquarters.
Small strange world, eh?