I opened a Newsweek magazine yesterday. Toward the end were two stories on Dumpster diving. I lived in Seattle for a while, where the art of Dumpster diving was perfected. I knew folks who took to those Dumpsters for still-fresh breads and veggies. Most of them were young people from middle- and upper -lass homes just starting out: “Look, these idiots put this good food in the trash, and we get to benefit.”
From Newsweek, I learned Dumpster diving has now grown into a movement where the joke is on corporate America: screw consumerism, dive-in! I also learned that the movement, which includes bartering, now has a name: Freegans, Free + Vegan, with a huge membership in New York City (a population that evidently supports some delicious Dumpsters).
Back in Seattle, Dumpster diving made me cringe. Today, it still does. I was a volunteer for a homeless newspaper and volunteered with a group of writers who wrote with homeless youth and adults. Everyday in Seattle, I saw people Dumpster dive, but not the small group of youngsters who bragged about it. I saw guys pushing shopping carts full of their possessions, with a few sweaters on, in need of a shave, shower and a home.
None of the Dumpster diving kids I knew were homeless. I didn’t get it. I felt the same way about another movement that started in Seattle around the same time: voluntary simplicity. Yikes! Just writing the name freaks me out all over again. I encountered these folks at a bakery across from my apartment. They had their own coffee mugs behind the counter and got together to discuss how to make the world a better place by living more simply: the bus; less dishware; no cell phones, answering machines or computers; and more secondhand clothing.
As with Dumpster divers, I looked at these folks as self-righteous. Most of them were former Microsoft employees able to retire early from their stocks. I questioned if they even cared about other members of their community, or drove beyond their neighborhoods.
Yes, on a larger scale, I understood what they worked toward, just as I understand Freegans. It is good to fight consumerism, but call me an idealist: I just happen to think it’s still important to take to the streets or take over the civic meeting. I still think its best to fight for the poor. And somehow, Dumpster diving and voluntary simplicity seem like a form of mockery. Freegans have a choice, while others in our community fight to have a choice.
This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2007.
so mari is this another one of those topics you’ll start but then bail out once the conversation gets going stating: “In the end, not knowing what the truth is makes me far more content at this age than thinking I or anyone else really has figured this all out. If anyone has out there, then yes, you are full of cuacha. Other than that Dolly, these are discussions more appropriate over beer or cocktails at 3 a.m.”
“Most” of them were former Microsoft employees able to retire early from their stocks? Okay… How many freegans did you know? How many were former Microsoft employees? How many were able to live comfortably from their stock holdings? Hmmm…
I think you’re making this up. Not without good reason, or whatever, but it sounds wholly apocryphal. Not to say that there aren’t former Microsoft employees aren’t returning to the simple life. I’m just saying, I bet you know one at most.
What kind of veggies can you really get from dumpster diving? (By the way, is “dumpster” a trademark or do you just capitalize it for effect?) I would imagine any vegetables you’d find in the dumpster would be of suspicious quality or cleanliness. It’s not like this stuff is thrown away in tupperware sealed with plastic wrap!
I’ll bet most of the stuff in dumpsters is bread, like slightly stale bread from bakeries, or uneaten pizza at Italian restaurants. The nutritional value here is mighty suspect, as bread is mostly just starch, right? Nice way to get constipated. Anybody who could live on that must be very young.
I agree, your conclusion that these are Microsoft employees seems like just an assumption on your part. True, many of them probably have other means of support (cough cough parents cough). But you’re leaving out the possibility some of them are actually homeless or have mental disorders.
Last night I was out with a bunch of people who were drunk. Somehow on the street we ended up talking to a black guy from Alabama who offered to crack our knuckles, necks and backs in exchange for a few dollars. He must have worked for a holistic healer or chirpracter or something. Anyway, I asked him why he was homeless, and he said, unapologetically, he was addicted to coke.
His big black friend nearby said he had just gotten out of jail for killing a guy who raped his friend’s sister. I didn’t really believe him, but I asked to see the paper in his hand and it had the details of his parole. But I digress…
Sprawn! keep in mind this was in the early to mid-1990s, when employees who first worked for Microsoft could literally cash in those first stocks and retire early and well. And yes, I knew Microsoft retirees and nonretirees enjoying the wealth of those first stock options. That changed when the market crashed and the roaring Ninties during Clinton’s days came to an end. Freegans, I don’t know any, since this is a new movement. I knew people my age back then, mostly white from priviledged homes that took to early Dumpster diving before it became a movement. No making up here, just life.
Sam – dear editor Jimmy edited Dumpster for me – yes, a trademark. Did you guys take up the Alabama man’s offer of cracking for dollars? How was it?
It presents the question: are Dumpster divers and Freegans a new form of the limousine liberal?
Whereas many Democrats claim to care about the downtrodden (yet do nothing), at least the average Republican does not bellow such hypocrisy, for he does not particularly care.
“I’m pulling material from this Dumpster and reusing what is otherwise trash from evil consumerism that grips the people, but oh noes I gotta leave because some smelly homeless dude is coming up the way and he freaks me out.”
Let me say – I’ve talked to the homeless. I’ve picked them up in my car to make burger runs. What I find is, first, most Tucson bums are not weird or bad (you learn pretty quick if someone’s messed up and you need to get away from them). Second, a lot have drug dependency issues. Third, many are lonely – yeah, lonely. Sitting down and having a cig with a houseless person sometimes makes their day because it’s human interaction. I believe that, from conversations on the street with the houseless, many hold Christ and God close to their chest because no-one else is looking out for them.
(Getting hand outs means sustenance but doesn’t equal having a friend.)
(*- Note: Mind that I think the fact that I don’t wear flashy or trendy clothing or “look rich” may be why interactions were safer or easier.)
Frankly, the houseless are, usually not by choice, the ultimate anti-consumerists.
And where is Connie Tuttle amid all this repartee?
Freegans have a choice, while others in our community fight to have a choice.
Do we have Freegans in Tucson?
Well, who am I to question your personal experience? Anyway, I give some credit to people who have committed the crime of being born wealthy and later engage in band-aid cures for social ills. At least they are doing SOMETHING.
I am really glad you wrote this. Concern about “lifestyle” and how it affects the planet is so very difficult to maintain. People eat a salad and think, “I did my part today!” Huh? Or they buy themselves THREE Priuses and think, “That’s THREE TIMES as good for Mother Earth!” The problem is so poorly understood by the ignorant, unwashed masses. It’s so easy to drive to the Earth First Rally in a Gold Carbon Spewing Hummer.
Dumpster Diving and Freeganism are like a band aid for a machine gun wound. But it may be possible to turn the activities into something good. For instance, Grocery Stores throw tons… TONS of food away every day. While it is certainly a good thing to contribute organic materials to landfill mulch. It seems to me that a “point-source” solution to that problem could be effective. WHich is to say that Grocery stores should MULCH. Something! We need to do SOMETHING! Nobody is doing ANYTHING!
There are food bank and feeding programs across the coutry that coordinate with grocery stores and restaurants to collect food before it gets to the Dumpster. In the beginning it was difficult for grocery stores especially to buy into the concept, saying its against policy, etc. But eventually it worked with the larger chains and others followed. Again, it always depends, what adovates you have in your community.
OK,make that advocates!
Okay, so I got some great Dumpster diving stories although not food related.
Years ago my friend was seriously into Dumpster diving and because she lived in an apartment complex that was full of UA students who threw away anything and everything she scored some grest stuff: two Electolux vacuums, practically brand new clothing, money, someone’s term papers – which had been stolen in a backpack and dumped, boy was that person happy when she returned the stuff to them, a whole jewelry box full of costume jewelry which she gave her mother-in-law for christmas (mom-in-law never suspected).
But the best story she told was of finding one shoe which for some reason she held onto and then on a lark she stopped at a dumster across town and found the other shoe!
Spooky.
She sold a lot of the stuff, gave a lot away. She’s retired now, but says the best time of the year is when UA students are leaving town. They throw away everything!
Wanda… UofA students are indeed the best. I prowl those University neighborhoods like a trash-hawk in May and June. Even into July, the landlords are throwing away stuff that is left behind. It is a serious trash-pickers dream down there.
Dumpster Diving is RICH in CALIFORNIA. The 99c store has no locked trash bins, like ALL SUPER MARKTS do…so we go there daily. They toss the 2-lb plastic wrapped coffins of aubergine, broccoli, cauliflower, plums, peaches, nectarines, onions, chiles, DAILY. They toss the net bags of apples, citrus. I make jam all the time. I used to get whole watermelons, cantaloupes in summertime. While I dumpster dive, I tear open bread and throw it to the flocks of crows and pidgeons.
THE ALLEYS and front lawns of California are LITTERED with fruit. I get peaches, apples and every kind of citrus that way. What do you do with twenty grapefruit? FIRSt, wash any fruit that fell in soapy water, rinse, drain. JUICE the ones that hit with a bang and may have a gash, FAST. The others you can wait a day or two. I use coupons to buy JUICY JUICE strawberry/ grape/ guava/ kiwi and cut it by half with grapefruit for health’s sake.
AVOCADO trees are hanging over alleys everywhere, ditto pomegranates. I have a rented house with two big gardens, so I plant the residues of my juicer. (I juice pomegranates like oranges). The seeds grow into baby trees which I put on CRAIGS LIST and trade for potting soil for my plant nursery (on a ping pong table cut in four with legs added, on south side of house.)
CHECK THE FREEBIES at craigs list. Every kind of furniture and electronic appliance! Check morning and night, as ads bring flocks of takers fast…if a nite ad, be there at six am if someone left it out on the street. Call the people and be charming if it’s a phone arrangement so they’ll let you go to the front of the line.
Read http://www.masterjules.net/frugindex.htm where all these tips are collected. Anita in L.A>