by 13 people |
The Freegans are Anti-Consumers
When I first heard of the Freegans I didn't know what to think.
Although taking garbage home for dinner seems a bit odd to most people, Freegans do it every day. And they know just where to go "shopping" too. You will find them fishing around in the dumpsters of some of the finest grocery stores and restaurants all over America.Â
The most surprising part of all of this is that Freegans are not neccessarily poor.  Most of them just hate to see food and things wasted.
Unfortunately, with the failing economy, Freeganism is becoming a new way of life for many who ARE in need.
They take food, clothing or home furnishings that have been discarded and transform this former garbage into edible dinners, useable clothing and repaired furnishings.Â
Cut the brown stuff off the apple and you've got good apple left, right?
Take a look at this eccentric lifestyle then speak up in my guestbook and share what you think.
Freeganism on Wikipedia
Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on "limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources".
Freegans "embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed." The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as 'dumpster diving'. Freegans salvage the food for political reasons, rather than out of need.
The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food.
Article about Freegans from the LA Times
- Free-lunch foragers - Los Angeles Times
- For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Midd
Official Freegan Website
- Freegan.info
- Freegan.infoStrategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism Official Website
- Freegan.info | LocalDirectories
- Dumpster Sites
- Freegan.info | Events
- A listing of Freegan Events
Read What the Bloggers are Saying about Freegans
- How to save a pretty penny with freegan-style food shopping
- Dan Cluderay has set up Approved Foods, a company which sells perfectly good food that's gone ou...
- Blueprint For a Better World, Free Toolkit Included!
- Pilloton goes beyond thinking outside the box and dives right into the dumpster; she once made high-...
- Get Breaking News Alerts
- We were told that was completely unacceptable, even coming from the mouth of a German Freegan (Freeg...
- Take a Bite Out of Food Waste
- Going freegan might be a bit much for most of us, but we can all take action to minimize food waste....
Recycled Toys
Finding New Homes for Old Toys
Check them out!
- Toy Rescue
- MySpace profile for ToyRescue with pictures, videos, personal blog, interests, information about me and more
Living Off of the Land
Books with practical information
Although I don't agree with the Freegans dumpster diving techniques, I do agree with recycling other products and believe that everyone should try to do their part in saving the environment before it becomes one big garbage heap.
Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging (Alternative Criminology)
From the Introduction
In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Existing as a dumpster diver and trash picker, Ferrell adopted a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. Riding around on his scrounged BMX bicycle, Ferrell investigated the million-dollar mansions, working-class neighborhoods, middle class suburbs, industrial and commercial strips, and the large downtown area, where he found countless discarded treasures, from unopened presents and new clothes to scrap metal and even food.
Richly illustrated throughout, Empire of Scrounge is both a personal journey and a larger tale about the changing values of American society. Perhaps nowhere else do the fault lines of inequality get reflected so clearly than at the curbside trash can, where one person's garbage often becomes another's bounty. Throughout this engaging narrative, full of a colorful cast of characters, from the mansion living suburbanites to the junk haulers themselves, Ferrell makes a persuasive argument about the dangers of over-consumption. With landfills overflowing, today's higly disposable culture produces more trash than ever before-and yet the urge to consume seems limitless.
In the end, while picking through the city's trash was often dirty and unpleasant work, unearthing other people's discards proved to be unquestionably illuminating. After all, what we throw away says more about us than what we keep.
Amazon Price: $20.25 (as of 02/09/2010) 
Dumpster Diving: The Advanced Course: How to Turn Other People's Trash into Money, Publicity, and Power
It's been 10 years since the publication of John Hoffman's cult classic of urban scavenging, The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving. Now the Garbage Guru is back with an advanced course in the unconventional economics of exploring the trash for fun and profit. Just some of the lessons you will learn include: the key secret to dealing with locked dumpsters; how to dive for information and use it to humiliate corporations, politicians and other evil-doers; the unusual profitability of diving for movie and celebrity castoffs; the BIG-bucks potential of industrial diving, including the top 10 most lucrative places to do it; how to sell your dumpster-dived wares through the flea market of the 21st century - eBay; how to parlay dumpster diving consciousness into finding cheap property, supporting radical causes, even landing political office; and much more!
Amazon Price: $15.60 (as of 02/09/2010)
Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated Edition
Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated Edition is for people who need to live on a lot less money. If you have been fired, demoted, retired, divorced, widowed, bankrupted or swindled - or you just want to quit your job and remain financially self-reliant - this book is for you. In it are hundreds of tips, secrets and necessary skills for living well on little money. Chapters include: Save Up to $37,000 a Year and Live on $12,000 a Year; Low-Cost Computers for Fun, Profit, and Education; Some Ways to Live on No Money at All; A Day of Cheap Living; A New Career or Business for You; Fix Things and Make Them Last; and Protect Your Investments and Make Them Grow. From cover to cover, this book is stocked with proven methods for saving money on shelter, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, health care and more. The author left the "system" in 1969 and has worked for himself ever since. Let him show you how you, too, can live happily, comfortably and with complete financial freedom.
Amazon Price: $17.82 (as of 02/09/2010)
What is Your Opinion
Are you for freeganism or against it and why?
Do you think Freeganism is a good idea?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand byYes. definitely!
VIVIAN BARNA says:
YES, AND DID YOU KNOW THAT WE EXPORT BILLIONS OF TONS OF TRASH TO OTHER COUNTRIES. SICK SICK SICK!!!
Posted October 26, 2009
RinchenChodron says:
I have a couple of friends who are experts at this. One used to dumpster dive and then take the goods to the Dog Track where they have a flee market and sell the stuff. Also regularly ate pizza from the dumpster and grocery store markdowns.
Posted November 08, 2008
Sarah says:
I think this is a great idea! What a waste to throw such huge amounts of food away. Someone should benefit from it. And what a lovely idea to take excesses to homeless shelters. I'm definitely for it!
Posted October 01, 2008
Jennie says:
I think it is a great idea! We have so much waste that goes in our garbage because we think we had to have it when we bought it. I'm guilty of this as well. I wouldn't know where to even begin to start this type of lifestyle, are there baby steps to take or do you just dive in?
Posted February 27, 2008
No way!
Spook says:
I think it poses far too many health problems. Surely there has to be a better way. With clothing it's simple, put it in a bag and give it to charity. Food seems a bit more dangerous thing to do this. Thoughtful lens.
Posted November 08, 2008
Margo_Arrowsmith says:
Well, yes and no. I will post this on the no side to balance it, but can make an argument for either side.
We should definitely be recycling. The land fills are waaaaay to full now. Also we just don't need all this c**p we buy and it just gets us working for nothing.
However.....if we don't buy things, people lose jobs. Its that simple.
Posted November 08, 2008
spirituality says:
I don't think I could see myself doing this. Costs way to much energy, for instance. But I'm not against other people doing it. I'm not for other people doing it. Trash is nobody's property, so if they want to use it, let them.
Posted May 23, 2008
Take a Look at what this Secret Freegan is Doing
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SECRET FREEGAN: Rescuing Food to Feed Homeless
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I've gathered over $52,000 worth of food and other stuff during the last 20 months. I've discovered that most grocery stores throw out $600 worth or more of fresh food every day. They will not donate the food to the hungry because of "li...
Freegan Reader Feedback
Personally, umm, no thanks . . . I think I'll pass.
What do you think of the concept of Freeganism?
Are you a Freegan? Do you know any freegans?
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Reply
- JaguarJulie JaguarJulie Jul 5, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
- Gosh, Robin -- I just don't know if I could be a freegan -- I had never heard of this terminology until I discovered your lens on this topic -- quite interesting stuff!
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Reply
- RinchenChodron RinchenChodron Nov 8, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
- Way to go rms - you beat me to this lens topic. Great book resources! Five stars.
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Reply
- Spook Spook Nov 8, 2008 @ 9:39 am
- First time I've heard of it,but is very common in Africa amongst deprived people. Great lens.
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Reply
- Margo_Arrowsmith Margo_Arrowsmith Nov 8, 2008 @ 7:25 am
- I once knew a guy who claimed that everything he owned came from garbage on the street....even his underwear! He lived in Manhattan so lots of people threw away lots of great things. He made a good living, btw.
Recycling is great and I love to find bargains at thrift stores. However, if people don't buy things people lose jobs. We have a huge population and it is based on a consumer economy.
Great lens! *****
And who knew these people had a name!
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Reply
- Belindance Belindance Nov 6, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
- Most people do this because they have too, not because it's some social statement or being cheap. Most are elderly, disabled, chronic health problems. YOU should check out "Secret Freegans" squidoo lens, see how many she feeds not to be original but for the "thrill" of helping the less fortunate.
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by rms
I'm Robin. I'm one of Squidoo.com's Giant Squid Community Organizers and the Squid Citizen, Giant Squid Mentor which means I'm ready, willing and able...
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