Freegans

I thought this was very interesting.
A couple relevent quotes:
"The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as 'dumpster diving'"

"At one point, it defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating" but goes on to describe practices including dumpster diving, plate scraping, wild foraging, gardening, theft, employee scams, and barter as alternatives to paying for food."

Blast, your classes cater to freegans!

What,no begging? What ever happened to the old fashioned ways?

Thankfully, I don't think Blast teaches the Freegans about "theft" and "employee scams".

Seriously, after I read the article, I began to think that there is a fine line between being a "freegan" and being a "freeloader". When one engages in theft, squatting or scams then I believe a moral line is crossed. It's sort of taking advantage of the charity of others.

How nice that they can dine so divinely freely on the refuse of the materialistic greedy masses.

So long as they aren't making a mess, stealing or burdening the health care system with uninsured food poisoning cases, then I suppose it's fine.

I already can't put my garbage out the night before pickup for fear that that some bum or ID thief is going to rummage through the bags and make a mess.

Life in the big city.

At all the restaruants I've worked at, whatever the employees didn't want to take home was thrown away every night per store policy. Literally garbage bags filled with gourmet food in perfect condition. Catering companies are the same way. Trays of untouched food, even cases of expensive alcohol, tossed after the event.

Why would they toss cases of alcohol it's not like it would go bad ???

Food I can see... but alcohol, soda, wine, etc ??? Never heard that before.

I've heard that different charitable groups, such as Second Harvest ( Second Harvest Food Rescue ), collect uneaten food from various restaurants and retailers rather letting get trashed. The food bank where I volunteer also picks up uncooked, still-frozen meals (like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, small pizzas) from local restaurants for us to pass out.

My grandparents lived through the Great Depression and drilled into us the lesson of not wasting food. The amound of food we throw out in the US (individually and collectively) is appalling.

The definition of "Freeganism" at that wiki described it as being "anti consumerist" and some of it is just that. However, part of it, essentially scavenging and dumpster diving relies entirely on the bad consumer practices of others to provide for one's self. If there were no consumer waste for them to scavenge they would have to join the regular consumers. It's silliness to say it's anti consumerist.

Having said that, I love a good dumpster dive find and think wild food foraging and urban gardening practices are great. There are also some other good practices in that wiki.

I have worked at places that threw away alcohol that had gone out of date. As soon as they could the cooks retrieved the alcohol. And then consumed it to no ill effects other than a few hang-overs. I worked at a popular buffet/steakhouse where we were required to throw away staggering amounts of food. I spoke to the General Manager about possibly donating or doing something with it, her reply was she could not due to corporate policy. If the company allowed the food to be consumed when it was no longer ok to serve to customers, and someone became ill they (company) was liable. Its a waste, but I can understand why they would not allow it. It seems maybe a waiver needs to be signed?

I've never heard that term.

For some reason, there are laws about restaurants having to throw out certain food items - whethere cooked, left-over, returned by the customer, etc...

Kind of funny, but a town I lived in back in Missouri had an annual "dumpster diving" day, when folks would take their unwanted stuff to the street side, and anyone that wanted it could take it. Usually didn't just last a day, but everyone turned a blind eye to the several-day "city wide yard sale."

Freganism is by definition parasitic. Without wasteful consumption, freganism wouldn't exist. It would just be stealing, or scrounging, or whatever. But throw in the wasteful consumption spin and suddenly those less glorious monickers fall by the wayside and you are a "fregan".

Mostly I find it very interesting that dumpster diving now has a banner that people can gather under and even - dare I say it - act haughty in the process! A form of Urban Survival at its best.

I was just saying a month ago that I wouldn't be surprised if, one day, there was a TV show on some cable channel about how to make turned food taste ok. Much in the way that people used to use rosemary and other strong spices to make turned meat taste better.

But now I think it could have more of a holistic approach including hunting/trapping food in an urban environment and then preparing it so it would be safe to eat.

(trapping = setting up faux garbage cans that say "food product only" for unsuspecting masses to dump food into!)

I crack myself up. But I think it could be pitched to the networks if the recession lasts much longer. Its just so crazy it might work.

They still do that here, sorta. The city sets aside a day for everyone to put their unwanted junk on the curb and they come pick it up. The night before and early that morning is a beehive of activity. I have ridden shotgun in a truck that was collecting before the city got there. There is also a couple of dumpsters that usually have something salvageable in them. I have also seen people wait at the dumpster for the stuff that a grocery store was throwing away.

Did you all know that Walmart locks up their trash? they have compactors that stay locked per regulations. When my store was remodeled they had a big construction dumpster out back, and would call the police on anyone trying to dumpster dive. Seriously. I was working there at that time, I saw a guy get arrested for it.

When I see the amount of perfectly usable stuff that's sent to the landfill, I shake my head. Sometimes I do more -- I'm not above diverting and reusing good stuff.

I'm cautious, though. A very skeptical eye is necessary. You have to dodge toxic or contaminated stuff, faulty electrical stuff, potentially dangerous stuff.

I would be pretty darn leery of recycled food straight from a dumpster. There are too many things you don't know about it. On the other hand, if you chat up the staff and build a rapport so you know what you're getting, maybe grease the wheels with a nice bottle as a gift or sharpen their knives, I can see it.

On the other hand, there are many farmers who pick up scrap buckets from restaurants and turn it into bacon. This saves the restaurant on disposal fees, so they don't mind accommodating you if you're reliable.

My wife is a grade school teacher. As you might imagine, copious amounts of food refuse is generated daily by the 100's of kids in the school cafeteria. The school now has an agreement with some local farmers who use the fresh leftovers for animal feed. The kids are trained to separate the reusable food from the rest of the stuff on their tray, and it goes into clean collection bins. The farmers come by and pick up daily.

Sorry about so much text.

In the past 30 years trash has gone from being a nuisance to a valuable resource for raw materials.
Almost all of the laws against dumpster diving came in when the cities (and the companies they contracted their waste disposal to) started to understand how much money all the scrap plastic and metal they were trying to bury was worth.
We have cases here where people are charged with theft for picking stuff out of the dump. In some cases it is even just for grabbing a bag of shredded paper to use as bedding for their pets.

Paper is often worth as much as scrap sheet metal and a look through the prices for most of the recycled material can be a real eye opener. A lot of communities even manage to squeeze a profit out of the organics by composting them and selling the compost through garden centers.


Trash has become valuable enough that about 20 years ago some communities reclaimed old dumps by mining them out and processing them through trash separators. Not only did they get to keep using their dump, they got paid for the metals and plastics too.
Usually an old dump has better metal values than most mine ores do and the metals are easier to process. (consider for a moment that an old cathode ray TV screen has at least 5 pounds of lead in the glass)

And then there are the overseas markets for trash...

It is not because of the homeless guy trying to scrounge food that the laws against dumpster diving are in place.
Nobody really cares about waste food at this point, and nobody really cares if a homeless person gets food poisoning and dies.
The welfare cases gathering pop bottles were not the big concern here either
But when they discovered that an army of scrap metal pickers were existing on what they could grab out of dumpsters it became a concern. Stopping them from collecting from the curb recycling boxes was next and now all trash has become private property owned by the recyclers.

It all makes me think about the rag and bone collectors from Dicken's England

There are laws in MA against distributing food that is unfit for consumption (ie-past its due date). I remember one specific incident where a small town was giving their old donuts (those that had been on the shelf since the last delivery) to local food pantries-until the govt put a stop to that. They were told they HAVE to throw it out. Their solution? They put them in bags, then in boxes, call the local food pantry, and then place them on top of the dumpster. The donuts & bagels would then go to the local Veterans Outreach programs-they were fine, just a few hours old. I myself benefitted from their generosity more than a few times.
I would hope that I would never become that desperate-I would be wary of picking out of garbage cans-but, one can never tell these days.

Great thing about living in rural areas is that nothing has to go to waste.

I cleaned out my farm shop 6 months ago.

I just put the stuff on the the side of the road.

Someone stopped and picked up EVERYTHING I put out within an hour.

No dumpster needed.

Funny, its exactly the same thing in my neighborhood. No need to donate at goodwill as everything from old shoes to old furniture is gone in less than a day. Even stained matresses are snatched up.

"Even stained matresses sick are snatched up."

So THAT'S where they're coming from! Someone here in WA is decorating the roadsides along Interstate 5 with old stained mattresses. Sometimes they leave them on the freeway.

Sue