I am hungry. I walk back and forth to my refrigerator, each time opening the door with virginal curiosity, as though something delicious will be sitting inside that wasn’t there a minute ago. For the past three days I haven’t had a single taste of anything meat or dairy, and now the tub of hummus and pita bread I’ve been living on seem entirely unappetizing. No, it’s not a fad diet. It’s veganism.
Already a vegetarian for almost two years, banishing all animal products from my diet is part of my venture into the world of freeganism. While your typical vegan avoids animal products of all kinds, he might still buy his soy milk at Whole Foods. But a freegan waits until that same Whole Foods is closed, and once the employees have tossed out the day’s garbage, snatches that soymilk from the trash.
The result is a lifestyle that combines veganism’s animal rights activism and environmental consciousness with an assault on wastefulness and capitalism.
“I went a whole summer without spending a cent on food,” says Anne Hamby, as we wait outside of a TD bank in Brooklyn Heights. It’s the middle of November and the only people on time for the trash tour (a monthly meet up of scavenge-ready freegans) are Hamby, her roommate, Ania Tomaszewicz and I. Both are petite, blond, and riddled with piercings. “It’s really sad that people can be so wasteful. This way we end up using up less resources and go home with some free food.”
Within minutes a group of eighteen freegans has assembled. Mostly women, the freegans have brought suitcases, tote bags and backpacks ready to be stuffed with supermarket rejects.
A few blocks away sits The Garden of Eden, an upscale supermarket at 180 Montague Street. I reach into the overflowing blue dumpster sitting on the sidewalk. Each person pulls out a clear trash bag; mine filled with so many plain bagels it looks like a bowl of oversized cheerios. Ania pulls out a never-touched blueberry pie still in it’s plastic wrapping, while Harold, a middle aged man with long grey hair, removes 14 pre-packaged trays of sushi from his bag. Darker trash bags hold pounds of discarded produce. Within minutes, the sidewalk is covered with plastic-wrapped baked goods and bruised fruit.
According to the Environmental Protection agency, discarded food is the single largest component of American trash. More than a quarter of all prepared food in the United States will be thrown away this year. That totals nearly 96 billion pounds of waste.
“We can afford groceries,” explains Janet Kalish, a Spanish teacher at Queen’s Cardozo High School. “This is about garbage. Garbage doesn’t make sense. It happens because the system is based on profit and not creating garbage doesn’t bring anyone profit.”
Kalish is one of the many freegans who dumpster dive to avoid giving money to corporations that value profit over ethics. The freegan philosophy boycotts a system that contributes to human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse. “No matter what you buy, your money goes into the big capitalism machine,” Tomaszewicz said.
In 2003, freegan.info was launched by the Activism Center at the Wetlands Preserve as an organizational tool for New York City freegans. Not only are the dumpster diving tours posted on a monthly calendar, but so are social events, discussion groups, and workshops. “Someone can look up all of our events for a month and just come join us,” said Kalish.
Janet Kalish has been a New York City freegan for six years. Trash tour regulars like her catch up on family, the work week, and relationships. Janet even told one woman, “I like your hair much better when it’s long like this, but it’s darker than it’s been in a while.” More than fellow freegans, these people have become friends, even family.
Social networking is largely responsible for the close society of freegans. Websites like freeganworld, a worldwide discussion group supported by riseup.net, allow it’s 1,951 subscribers to exchange ideas about politics, healthcare, agriculture, and education. Freegans can introduce themselves to other subscribers in their area, like Bob Mahoney who asked fellow Los Angeles freegans where the new dumpster diving hot spots are. Or M. Simmons who solicited twelve responses in one day after posting a question about humane ways to catch fruit flies. Conversations on freeganworld are often international. Dany, from Torino, Italy received freegan information from Dilcia, an Italian-speaking Floridian on October 20th.
The freegan movement has grown legs in Europe. A French man on the trash tour spoke little English, but still managed to tell me, “This goes on in France and England. I have done it there.” And when The Irish Times investigated the freegan trend, freegan.info founder Adam Weissman traced the lifestyle’s roots all the way back to “diggers,” agrarian communists who survived in England throughout the 17th century. “The term freeganism goes back to the 1980’s,” he said. “And the practices and ideas it refers to are even older.”
As we pass Trader Joe’s, a grocery store known for their eco-friendly philosophy, a woman to my left mumbles, “Trader Joes always gives us a hard time.” She is talking to me. Among the close-knit freegans, a newcomer is easy to spot. “They’re putting the trash out later now because it’s such a scene when they do. People socialize while they wait behind the store, and bring their cars because so much gets thrown out. It’s a real scene.”
On the fifth day of my induction into veganism I understand why the freegans stick together. I am panicking about my first date as a vegan. I’ve already begun qualifying my “oh, I’m a vegan,” with “it’s just for a project,” so people don’t stare at me like some kind of cultural freak. I can see it in their eyes: “oh, you’re one of those.” Chances are that when my date finds out everything on the menu is off limits, the only thing he’ll be trying to score is the check.
At the very least, I have been able to blame veganism for my weary state at work in the mornings. No one seems to suspect a hangover when you tell them you’ve gone vegan. My office just assumes that everyone who eats like a modern day hippie has bags under their eyes and doesn’t shower on a daily basis.
Any strictly adhering freegan would say it serves me right to have a bad day at work, because work is not part of the freegan philosophy. According to freegan.info, “we feel that there are more meaningful things to do with our time than work meaningless jobs that cause more pollution, make our bosses even richer, and do little to make the world a better place.” By living off the waste of others, freegans are able to diminish their economic needs. Squatting, inhabiting empty or condemned living spaces, a common freegan practice, drives economic needs down to nearly nothing. Just as freegans find delicious food in grocery store dumpsters, freegan squatters find suitable living quarters in the homes that people vacate. One New York Times reporter described a freegan squatter-inhabited mansion in Buffalo, New York: “The property is a turn-of-the-century mansion with six fireplaces, a cavernous dining room, a library, several enormous bedrooms, servants’ quarters, and in in-ground swimming pool.”
“I know people who squat, or couch surf,” said Hamby. “But I just live in Brooklyn.”
The New York City freegans also organize “free markets,” Kalish tells me. At these open bazaars, which are posted on the freegan calendar, participants exchange food, skills, clothing, books, and other goods. “The Really Really Free Market is a celebration,” according to the freegan website. “We discard capitalist notions of interaction and have fun trying new models of exchange.”
The night after the trash tour I again find myself in Brooklyn with the freegans. This time we are not gathering food, but eating it.
Once a month the freegans come together and make a meal of the food they’ve gathered at the previous night’s trash tour.
“Freegan feasts originally started as a way for all of us to come together and share food while showing people that it’s edible,” Kalish explains in the doorway of a fellow freegan’s brownstone apartment. The peach marble countertops of the kitchen are covered with last night’s spoils. Fifteen corn stalks, a head of lettuce, two butternut squash, broccoli florets, a container of hummus, a mound of sliced sweet potatoes, four tomatoes, a bag of snow peas, three bags of bananas, and a round loaf of bread as big as a bed pillow. “We have to feed 20 people tonight,” she tells me. “We’ve had as many as 40 and as few as six, but 20 is pretty average.”
While ten freegans descend on the uncooked food, grabbing what ingredients they need for their own recipe, I take some soymilk and a few bananas to a blender. Jeremy, a freegan from last night’s tour, sets up his chopping station next to me. A freegan since Labor Day because “it seemed like a cool thing to do when I moved to New York,” Jeremy is a clinical pastoral student, and a Chaplin at a local hospital. “I see this more in a theological light,” he explains. “God brings to light his beauty through that which we reject.”
Two hours after the chopping and stirring ensued, a table of squash soup, mashed potatoes and avocado paste, sautéed broccoli, bread, and tofu stir-fry awaits 20 freegans hungry for dinner. Everyone grabs a plate and digs into the dishes family style. My chocolate-banana smoothie is a hit with everyone except Cindy. “Cindy doesn’t like bananas,” Kalish tells me. But Jeremy says, “It’s like drinking a chocolate cloud.”
A woman I have yet to meet picks up a glass of my smoothie and asks, “all of this was found in the trash?” As she sips, I tell the story of last night’s trash tour, and explain the freegan philosophy. It was just last night that I had this same conversation with Kalish, and Tomaszewicz, but I was the one asking the questions, not answering them. Kathy, as she introduces herself, is a friend of Maria, the brownstone owner. While Maria is a freegan, Kathy is not, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t welcome to enjoy the meal.
Once the food has been devoured, the cooking crew grabs our coats and purses. For those who ate but did not cook, it’s their job to clean. A true community, each freegan gives a little so that they all can reap the rewards.
My motivation for freeganism is considerably less sincere than Jeremy’s pastoral understanding or Kalish’s environmental zeal, and by the seventh day I’ve cracked. The call of cheese proved too powerful, and after one week on my vegan diet, Artichoke pizza on 14th street and 1st avenue is my downfall. While excited to rejoin the dairy eating public, I can’t help but look at my slice of pizza differently. “I bet if I came right before they closed I’d get this for free,” I think. But my first taste of cheese in a week dispels any qualms I have over paying for my pizza. I’m one bite in and it’s already worth the $4.50.
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Comments (15)
Personally, I do not think I can practice freeganism, but to those who choose, more power to you. I do agree that too much food is thrown away when it is still fit to be eaten. Perhaps the grocery stores could donate the food to soup kitchens or other similar establishments rather than just throwing the food away. There are starving people amongst ourselves, I'm sure they would appreciate a nutritious hot meal. I like that groups of local freegans have found each other to support the concept of community. I often find myself not wanting to know my neighbors or even saying hello to people I see frequently, like the checker at the market, the mailman, etc. I do hope that more people will want to participate in community gardens within their neighborhood, especially in places were not many people have yards to grow food and wish to supplement their groceries with fresh locally grown, inexpensive produce.
I don't practice freeganism, but I find it wasteful to see good food and slightly wilted vegetables thrown away and not given to the hungry and less fortunate.
For anyone who's interested in learning more about dumpster diving for food, as well as many grocery stores' practices and policies, I'd highly recommend watching the short documentary called "Dive" - really really interesting, and even though I love Trader Joe's, it made me think twice about their practices!
I work at a local, green-business certified grocery store, and even though most of this "trash" is put in a compost, I still lots of food being wasted. I take the rejected produce home whenever I can.
I personally can't do this but I sure as hell do support it. I never throw food away like that unless like there's only a bit left (already cooked or so), spoiled or tasted really awful.
Sick. It's incredibly shameful the amount of food we waste due to regulations on stores, products, corporations, programs, etc. Yet there's gotta be a better way to give away this free food than make people dumpster dive for it. Can't it be delivered to a shelter or something like that, where it can be cooked up and served that day?
This is really very interesting. When I worked at a grocery store bakery, we wasted a multitude of food each day. I would take the breads and such that we would throw out and go feed the homeless with a group.
Wasting food is a shame. There are a lot of poor starving children out there.
Freegan World is down is down because they featured it on Oprah Winfrey. Not a fan of O but I support this. Here's a freegan blogger I follow:
http://gandollo.weebly.com/
Odd how we continually try to produce more food. If we produced less and just ate more of it, there wouldn't be such a strain on farmers and landfills.
I don't practice freeganism or anything. I do know though that when I was director of a soup kitchen that we would get all that food as a donation. It actually helped out sooo much. Sometimes I had to sit there for hours on end and sort through rotten vegetables and bread, but in the end, we got so much good food from it. I think if more people were aware of this then it wouldn't be put to waste.
It's so wasteful to throw food, vegetables and fruits still fit for consumption. Better to give them to soup kitchens.
Good food should not go wasted!
I think that's fucking disgusting. It's in a trash can, it should not be taken back out to eat. Unless you're a fucking hobo. I don't think good food should go wasted, they should donate it to a homeless shelter or something, but seriously, that is disgusting.
"According to freegan.info, “we feel that there are more meaningful
things to do with our time than work meaningless jobs that cause more
pollution, make our bosses even richer, and do little to make the world a
better place.” By living off the waste of others, freegans are able to
diminish their economic needs."
While I was reading this article, besides the whole "yeah, I'm glad this food it being eaten by someone", I thought to myself have the freegan lifestyle could not exist without the capitalist live style. It depends on the waste of others. Which is fine, but I just don't want anyone thinking everyone should be doing this, because then it wouldn't work. Freegans are a (weclomed, IMO) byproduct of our wasteful society who works those meaningless jobs. So the jobs are only meaningless to them because they have society's waste to sustain them, but they are not to the rest of the population.