Freegan.....Didja see the segment on Oprah on 2.27??

[superiorgirl]

There was a segment featuring people who are embracing a "freegan" lifestyle. I've never heard THAT term before! Have you? Anyway, some of the people came from a 6 figure income, realized just how much of the planets resources we are frivolously wasting, and have switched to a more eco friendly way of living.

There was a part about dumpster diving for food that got to me. We've talked before about where we draw our line in thrifting, here's another of mine!! I will say that we've raised chickens in the past and my sister, who is asst. manager of a grocery store, would have the produce dept. set aside the stuff that they were going to toss so I could take it home for the yard birds. I will also admit that one day there were about 10 flats of strawberries. Many of them were beyond prime, but many more were not. I gave the birds the old/damaged ones and made jam from the rest. However, they were never in the dumpster!! I got them directly from the produce prep cooler at the store.

On the show were folks who had curb shopped their furniture, hadn't bought clothing in 3 years, and more. Whadja think??

[Other People s Junk]

I didn't see the show, but have heard of Freegans before.  It grosses me out to think about the food part of it... AGH.

[foutchie]

I didn't see it, but wonder what Oprah (who has a what, 7, 8 figure salary or more?)  really, truly thought of it, despite how she may have applauded it on the show.....

[Good Buddy]

Getting something for free is all well and good, but there are folks that are homeless not by choice who could use those resources and gain a more legitimate benefit.
Some homeless choose to live on the streets, they don't get ANY sympathy from me. Beggars for the most part suck! I've had several personal experiences with folks that just didn't want to work for a living but wanted me to give them money that I earned by working and maintaining discipline.
I'm not knocking the "Freegan" movement, but it takes away resources that people who really are needy won't have access to. If some of these Freegans put as much energy into a real job, then they could still recycle by thrifting, which in many cases does benefit the homeless, or just buying used to keep things out of landfills.
To each his or her own as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

GB

[alexandra]

My crazy ya-ya (greek for Grandma) used to garbage pick.  She'd check the dumpsters outside of food stores.  One day, the police called my cousin Andy because they found her after she'd fallen into a dumpster.  He went and got her.

He asked her why she did it when she had enough money to buy food.  She sat him down to "give him a lesson."  She started talking about how you can "find an onion and it looks rotten on the outside, but if you slowly peel away the layers...."  Well, at that point, Andy thought she was giving an analogy and had a wise old-person lesson to impart.  Then she went on to say "after you peel away a few more layers, the rest isn't rotten, and then you can eat the onion because inside, it's still good."

Suffice it to say, we all remember our Ya-Ya as a bag lady.  Andy got quite accustomed to picking her up at the police station after those sorts of episodes.

When people go ahead and live the "Freegan" lifestyle, they certainly have no right to complain when people label them as crazy...

Thriftily,
Alexandra
www.livingwithoutmoney.blogspot.com

[Felicia]

I did see that show.  Oprah looked at the Freegans as if they were from another planet -- but politely, of course, so as not to insult their alien culture.

I must say I'm a little surprised by the negative comments here.  Dumpster diving is unsanitary?  It's for poor/homeless people?  An awful lot of Americans would say the same things about thrift store shopping, and we all know how wrong they are!  I'm not a Freegan -- I'd never have the energy to root through dumpsters every night -- but I've picked a few books and magazines out of the Borders' and Barnes & Noble dumpsters.  (I even found a lovely Mission-style end table in a B&N dumpster.  All it needed was a little wood glue to make it good as new.)  If I was poking around in a Whole Foods garbage can and found food still in its original packaging, you bet I'd take it.  It's just like thrifting, only free!  What could be better than that?

[valleythriftshopper]

ABC News did that same story a few months ago, I think I like the Mom by day, stripper by night story better!

There have been many a treasure pulled from a dumpster on the Antiques roadshow.  If I knew of some good dumster spots to hit I'd do it too, although not for food but for trash to treasure stuff.  I would not bother with food because you never know why it was thrown out even if it looks good. 

Sometimes if I am short on boxes for my Ebay stuff I drive by the dumster behind a Family Dollar store nearby, they have a cardboard recycling dumster that is mostly full of boxes.  Once I pulled out a box to use & it had four brand new pump dispensers of SoftSoap shea butter (the best kind) hand soap inside.  They probably got thrown out with the box by accident, in any case I was psyched!

[Jay2TheRescue]

I did see that show.  Oprah looked at the Freegans as if they were from another planet -- but politely, of course, so as not to insult their alien culture.

I must say I'm a little surprised by the negative comments here.  Dumpster diving is unsanitary?  It's for poor/homeless people?  An awful lot of Americans would say the same things about thrift store shopping, and we all know how wrong they are!  I'm not a Freegan -- I'd never have the energy to root through dumpsters every night -- but I've picked a few books and magazines out of the Borders' and Barnes & Noble dumpsters.  (I even found a lovely Mission-style end table in a B&N dumpster.  All it needed was a little wood glue to make it good as new.)  If I was poking around in a Whole Foods garbage can and found food still in its original packaging, you bet I'd take it.  It's just like thrifting, only free!  What could be better than that?

My sister once borrowed my pickup truck to pick up a piece of furniture she bought at the Pottery Barn outlet in Leesburg.  When she got back she had the furniture, and this enormous area rug.  She said after she loaded up the truck she noticed the rug hanging out of the dumpster.  Well, suffice to say it ended up in the truck.  I think she still has that rug.  We don't know why they threw it out, it wasn't damaged or had any strange stains or smells.  It just needed to be vacuumed.

-Jay

[dukek9]

When I was a kid, we used to get animal bread from the bakery.  This was bread and other baked goods past their sell date or perhaps damaged--been flattened or something. Now they were supposed to break open all the packages at the bakery, but often didn't.

Well, it was just a treasure trove of goodies.  Just a lot of fun to look through and see what we might want. Of course sometimes the items were definitely animal food--spoiled or broke open, but that was ok, it was jsut fun to see if a treasure was in there, sort of like thrifting!

Dee

[Big Daddy Audio]

I did see that show.  Oprah looked at the Freegans as if they were from another planet -- but politely, of course, so as not to insult their alien culture.

I must say I'm a little surprised by the negative comments here.  Dumpster diving is unsanitary?  It's for poor/homeless people?  An awful lot of Americans would say the same things about thrift store shopping, and we all know how wrong they are!  I'm not a Freegan -- I'd never have the energy to root through dumpsters every night -- but I've picked a few books and magazines out of the Borders' and Barnes & Noble dumpsters.  (I even found a lovely Mission-style end table in a B&N dumpster.  All it needed was a little wood glue to make it good as new.)  If I was poking around in a Whole Foods garbage can and found food still in its original packaging, you bet I'd take it.  It's just like thrifting, only free!  What could be better than that?

A dumpster is probably the most unsanitary place one can search for food.  You'd be better off killing and roasting a pigeon.  I don't think they are ever washed, and the micro-zoological pantheon living in one of those things has got to be off the charts.

Furniture, clothing, non-edible/durable stuff in general, can always be cleaned and scrubbed.  Food that's been chucked and is in a dumpster is past my point of salvage, wrapper intact or not.  I know of half a dozen places within 3 miles of my house where I can get a free meal.  I don't need to dumpster dive for food - It's not a pride thing.  Why save $2.00 on a loaf of bread and then drop $35.00 on a visit to the ER (not to mention prescriptions)?

Rule of thumb:  If it's going into my body, it's NOT coming out of a dumpster.

See you next time
bye for now.

[superiorgirl]

This thread has been interesting reading! So, do you define a difference between dumpster diving and curb shopping?

It has been a long while, but I have stopped and scurved things that folks have out on the curb on garbage day. Not food though! lol.

I also remember years and years ago, when we could still take stuff to the landfill, seeing a family throwing out stuff that obviously was the result of clearing out the house of an elderly relative. They left bags and bags of good, clean, useful household items on the edge of the trash piles. I harvested a mound of bath towels. I was going to turn them over to dh for shop rags until I opened them up and saw that they were practically new, still smelled of fabric softener, and without flaw! In the wash they went, then into my linen cabinet.

Where is your line here?

[Felicia]

Oh, dumpsters are unsanitary, for sure.  No argument here.  But then, much of life is unsanitary.  That's why we invented soap.   
And truly, do you know what's on those cucumbers you buy at the supermarket?  Maybe the last person who handled them never washes his or her hands after using the toilet.  You just wash the food at home and hope for the best.  I suspect that food that comes with its own natural "packaging" -- bananas, oranges, even scrubbable food like apples and cucumbers -- would be fine as long as there were no punctures in the skin.  I wouldn't risk grapes, but that's just me. 

Of course, this is all just theory, because as I said, I don't dumpster dive for food. But that's because I'm lazy, not because I'm squicked out by the concept. 

And as for picking stuff up at the curb: We have Brush & Bulky pickup twice a year down here, and we sometimes set out perfectly good stuff that we're too lazy to haul to the thrift, because we know someone will snap it up immediately.  And someone always does.  I myself found a large amount of nice clean chicken wire in a neighbor's pile, which I then gave away on Freecycle.  Gotta love it.

[ChrisMiss]

I had a friend back in the 80's that used to go dumpster diving behind the grocery store just about every day.  She came home with some pretty good stuff too.  Like the store would throw out almost a whole case of ketchup because a bottle broke and got ketchup on the other bottles.  She got cheese, still cold and wrapped well.  She got lots of stuff and saved some money.  She bought all her groceries from that store to pay them back for her diving.  After several months the store installed a tall fence around their dumpsters to keep people out of them.  I guess they thought they were losing money with people diving in their dumpsters.

[goodaim]

Hadn't seen the Oprah show and hadn't heard of the word "freegan" before. In general, I'm too lazy to dumpster dive, but still recall one successful time when I did so by happenstance, back around 1992 when my husband and I were living in an apartment complex. While getting ready to toss our garbage bag in the dumpster by our building, I noticed the many brand-new items from a greeting card supplier - party goods, stationery, novelty birthday items,etc. Everything still was in its original packaging, and must have just been dumped there - no garbage bags on top. I assumed this stuff came from a sales rep or supplier who was getting rid of an older product line.

I scooped up a bunch of stuff from the top layer and took it back to our apartment with me. My husband thought this was pretty bizarre behavior on my part, until I tallied up the prices on everything I'd nabbed -it came up to almost $250, and remember, this was back in the early 90's. Then he didn't think it was so bad. 

As I said, in general I'm lazy about dumpster diving, but don't have a problem with anyone else doing it - hopefully one takes proper precautions such as watching out for broken glass, perishable foods, the safety of damaged food packaging, etc.

As far as sanitation, I figure we all have our own comfort levels of what we will and won't tolerate, and that's okay.  I can still recall a woman in my daughter's playgroup telling the rest of us to avoid a local fast food restaurant's play area because it wasn't kept clean enough. Meanwhile, as she was saying this, her toddler daughter was playing with a handful of pennies on the floor. Now, what could be dirtier than money - think of where the average penny has been - who had handled it, where it might have been dropped, etc. (Besides, one would think pennies could be a choking hazard for toddlers.)

ChrisMiss, perhaps that store put up its fence as a way to avoid getting sued by dumpster divers who could get hurt in the dumpster. Or perhaps the store was trying to keep away dumpster divers of the four-legged variety.

goodaim

[valleythriftshopper]

While getting ready to toss our garbage bag in the dumpster by our building, I noticed the many brand-new items from a greeting card supplier - party goods, stationery, novelty birthday items,etc. Everything still was in its original packaging, and must have just been dumped there - no garbage bags on top. I assumed this stuff came from a sales rep or supplier who was getting rid of an older product line.

I scooped up a bunch of stuff from the top layer and took it back to our apartment with me. My husband thought this was pretty bizarre behavior on my part, until I tallied up the prices on everything I'd nabbed -it came up to almost $250, and remember, this was back in the early 90's. Then he didn't think it was so bad. 

As I said, in general I'm lazy about dumpster diving, but don't have a problem with anyone else doing it - hopefully one takes proper precautions such as watching out for broken glass, perishable foods, the safety of damaged food packaging, etc.

Hope you had many great parties with your loot.  I would have been out there with a wheel barrel hauling away all those goodies!

That reminds me of the time the SA had a huge bin of party suppiles.  I don't know if they were from the same donor but they were all from the 80's.  There was Rainbow Brite, Punky Brewster, Alf, Transformers, Little Twin Stars, etc.  No complete sets but for 29 cents apiece I picked up several Little Twin Stars items.  I remember buying Little Twin Stars stationary & other items (I still have my stamp pad) at the Hallmark store when I was a kid so it was nostalgic for me!