NYT Article on Freegans
Posted by rhetcompgirl on Jun 27, 2007 · Member since Aug 2006 · 77 posts
As a person who comes from a long line of scavengers I think this is incredible. I had a student last year who wrote a paper on being a freegan. Fascinating stuff.
i saw a thread about this on another board (NVR).
That's a really cool article. Good link to the Freegan.info website as well. Thanks for posting.
i really love the freegan way of life. maybe someday..
"...even if those who took them were risking health, safety and a $100 fine from the Sanitation Department." <- i really hate that fact that people can be fined for taking trash. if that's what they want to do...
some kids while I was on the road offered my some "freegan: cookies they had gotten from the dumpster of a grocery store. when I declined because they had animal products in them they looked confused and said "but, its dumpster"
guess they didnt understand where I was coming from
I think the idea of reusing/recycling others perfectly fine (or fixable) throw aways is a wonderful idea...I'm all for reducing waste in landfills. I agree that people are too wasteful nowadays..but........
It's one thing to get stuff directly from the grocery or rest.un-eaten that was going to be thrown out. It's another to dive for other's left overs.. You really set yourself up for a myriad of potentially fatal illnesses..for what?
I can understand their philosphy, and why they are living this lifestyle, but there are other ways to sustain oneself without paying the "big man" and/or putting your body in danger.
The question about what's safe to eat or not made me think about an article in our department's course reader. Lars Eighner used to be homeless and wrote a piece called "On Dumpster Diving," which discusses the finer points of the, um, craft. My students loved this piece.
http://www1.broward.edu/~nplakcy/docs/dumpster_diving.htm
so much food goes to waste, especially at restaurants and campus dining centers, that it really just makes sense... I mean, at the dining center where I work, some scraps from the bakery/veggie processing area go to the greenhouse to feed some of the animals that live there...and *some* overstocked food goes to the salvation army once in a while, but we still throw out A LOT...
in fact, much of the stuff we throw away isn't even "bad," it's just not supposed to be served again, etc. so it gets thrown. Yesterday I saw two big boxes of bananas in the dumpster--they were just barely starting to get spotty, and would have made it through another few days, and then would've made fantastic banana bread, etc., but nooooo, garbage.
I'd honestly pick our dumpsters everyday if it wasn't the fact that I am an employee and would feel extra embarrassed if I got caught.
:-\