freegans? legit counterculturalists or just cheap garbage pickers?

lol fight club 'defined a generation'

that article is has fucking ridiculous point of view and i just read the first page

the funny thing about living off of other people's waste is that, well, it requires other people to be wasteful.

sorta counter-intuitive there. These folks would be better served spending time learning how to build and make stuff.

fuck a labelling people and fuck a focusing on 'freaks' of society
irresponsible missing-the-point journalism
xpost
where is eye-roll emoticon?

I only read the first page, did anyone actually interviewed mention Fight Club? If so, then I want to punch them. However, I've long known people who do this sort of thing and I think it's pretty good if you can pick up something through this method - saves money and waste. Anybody who feels the need to become a spokesperson is usually an idiot, but to just go ahead and do it is both financially and ethically sound, so I can't see why anyone would have a problem with it. Oh, and yes, it does require other people to be wasteful, but the fact is that they are wasteful. Does the US have freecycle, which encourages the seeking out of people to take stuff rather than just junking it?

Most people work 40-plus hours a week at jobs they don’t like to buy things they don’t need.”

is very nearly a direct Tyler Durden quote.

There's almost an argument to be made that picking through trash is countercultural. Almost.

Anyway, not throwing perfectly good stuff away is a good idea regardless of whatever idiotic label some journalist or would-be spokesperson slaps on it.

building and making stuff is fine and good but requires, y'know, materials with which to build and make. fixing or rebuilding stuff that already exists makes sense re: environmental footprint, etc.
and it wld seem true that 'people are wasteful' but people are wasteful in a society of an abundance of things, most of which are built to break and be easily and cheaply replaced by more things that will break. and go where? landfills? just because people need things to spend their money on?

xpost
pretty sure people were saying stuff like this long before fight club

sells papers tho :/

Actually most people spend most of their 40-hour money on housing, food, utilities, healthcare, etc., and all the "stuff they don't need" is just gravy. I'd say "fuck you" to this person but she's only a dumb kid.

johnny crunch are you on the UA mailing list? because they are talknig about this right now also.

Dumb kid? Ms. Nelson, who is 51, spent her 20s working in restaurants and living in communal houses, but by 2003 she was earning a six-figure salary as a communications director for Barnes & Noble.

Also please to begin unpacking the word "need," Ms. Nelson.

I can't actually bring myself to read through this, but I will say that NYC is fairly amazing on this front, and that there's nothing "counter-cultural" about it -- there's a basic common culture of people leaving things out on the street and assuming that someone will make some use of it. I mean, people label this stuff. There'll be an A/C unit on the curb with a note that says "don't bother, it's broken." There'll be another A/C unit on the curb with the number of BTUs taped to the side, just in case you need to know. I once claimed a pristine leather loveseat (with friendly note attached) and then wasted an hour under cloudy skies calling everyone I knew in the neighborhood and asking if they wanted an awesome leather loveseat. (I also appreciate the people who keep their mattresses wrapped on the sidewalk and spray-paint BEDBUGS on them just in case.)

You compound this with thousands of students vacating the same block at the same time, and it's a bonanza of unneeded things changing hands -- nothing weird or counter-culture about this in the least, unless you consider your older sibling's hand-me-downs or getting furniture from your parents some kind of underground gesture.

I mean I've read my Thoreau. I know a lot of what we think we "need" is socially constructed. But if you want to see what living with less is really like go live in the Delhi slums. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're "living deliberately" because you get some 2-day expired Humboldt Fog cheese out of the Whole Foods dumpster.

xpost - sorry, I assumed the quote was from the girl in the pic -- didn't read the article yet

(Reasons for this, around here, should be pretty obvious: (a) trash goes on the sidewalk, not in an alley; (b) people have small-ass apartments and storing stuff is expensive; (c) people don't have cars and the streets are crowded, so moving stuff around is often more trouble than it's worth; etc.)

FWIW I have a couple of (formerly) good college friends who became freegans. One of them gets food stamps too.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/213/512722152_229470270c_o.jpg

(my super old tv!)
(there is a thread)

"We live in a contradiction: a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian—where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone—is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we're lucky that we don't live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it's better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc"

That thread was lovely rrrobyn, and nabisco is otm. There is less of a culture of it here in the UK, which is why things like freecycle have taken off, I think - it makes it more normal for anybody to do it, rather than being a marginalised activity.

xpost

As a general cultural activity I'm totally in favor of there being as much of that as possible, obv.

there's a basic common culture of people leaving things out on the street and assuming that someone will make some use of it.

whoah gotta catch up on this thread a bit but hey, my neighborhood is TOTALLY like this and I've seen it in action (and participated in it as well) more times than I can count. I'm just sayin building an ideology or "movement" out of it is stupid, because its not productive or proactive - its inherently REACTIVE.

anyway Hurting OTM (particularly with his Delhi zinger)

These folks would be better served spending time learning how to build and make stuff.

http://agualisa5.blogs.sapo.pt/arquivo/ipod.shuffle.chinese.cultural.revolution%5B1%5D.jpg

That Delhi zinger is a good encapsulation of my idea for a reality show to pitch to MTV - The REAL Real World.

sorry shakey. but maybe there's enough building and making stuff going on already. maybe some people don't want to build and make stuff.

Well, in a way it is, but freegans aren't going to convince everybody to be less wasteful, so why not take advantage of that and reclaim goods that would otherwise go to landfill? As my first post on this thread states, I do find the people who proclaim themselves to be creating a movement pretty nauseating, but at the same time, I'd rather they were self-righteous than apathetic.

xpost to Shakey

I guess the best argument to be made for it is just "that much less stuff being wasted." Which is fine with me.

xpost

Yeah don't worry, Shakey, that's kind of what I meant! The idea of a committed Dumpster-diving counter-culture is probably far less useful right now than the idea of normal people having a common culture where they take decent care of things and make an effort to pass them on to others who could use them. To be honest people generally do have this mentality in high-density city areas and in small communities, and when it comes to clothes I've met nary a middle-aged midwestern lady who's not trying to pimp someone's old things to someone else's child -- those goods-conservation habits die hard -- but a kind of resurgence of that stuff among young people could certainly help (especially in an age where -- have you seen this? -- you can buy packages of microwavable hot dogs that are already in a bun).

in case it isn't clear I am all for the elimination of planned obsolescence in product design, recycling, reclaiming abandoned/used materials, etc.

maybe some people don't want to build and make stuff.

fuck a lazy people

how is this categorically Reactive? it seems clear to be that it is also productive and proactive
again, the labelling is coming from media reactions/interpretations, not nec the people actually involved. sure this is portrait of some kind of loose 'community' but it doesn't take into account all the other people who do this too. why? because it's a newspaper article.
xpost

the world is already fucking overflowing with goddmaned stuff made by humans! fuck a stuff.

The only thing that skeezes me a little is the idea of leftist kids combing Dumpsters and pulling out giant "wastes" of food material that's been deemed non-for-sale via other, deader leftists' hard work to make sure corporations can't sell you rotten crap.

Reactive, productive, eh: people are throwing out perfectly good stuff they don't need anymore; other people are snagging it and making use of it; this is normal and good!

the "stuff" just needs to be better made, that's all. the world is floating in crap because the materials used and the products being created ARE SHIT.

and you learn to make better products by, y'know, knowing how to make things.

Unfortunately the quality and usage-life of most products is continuing to decrease. We live in the age of the $15, 2-year toaster.

(2 years if you're lucky)

how is this categorically Reactive? it seems clear to be that it is also productive and proactive
again, the labelling is coming from media reactions/interpretations, not nec the people actually involved. sure this is portrait of some kind of loose 'community' but it doesn't take into account all the other people who do this too. why? because it's a newspaper article.

I think we all agree this is a stupid article that is tryign to promote the idea that this is a "movement" with an ideology (and there are people quoted in that article who def. seem to have formed an ideology around this behavior). I'm just sayin that ideology is basically stupid and reactionary - the end result IS Delhi, where you have the majority of the population living in shit conditions off of shit, sans any skills or knowledge about how to improve their environment.

people should make good stuff if they want to but not be told by leftists that they SHOULD BE MAKING STUFF. that they should be good little workers.

I mean yes lets all recycle stuff and re-use everything and trade with our neighbors YES YES YES but lets not pretend that that's the sole behavior you can build a functional future for humanity on.

x-post

what's the alternative Tim, that they sit around mindlessly consuming stuff?

a world cleared of the drive for money would put a whole different perspective on exactly how much STUFF needs to be made and how many people need to be involved in manufacturing it.

maybe people should build their own toasters
but really, a lot of stuff that's built to break is full of bits that can be made into other things - just that most people aren't going to do that - until apocalypse time obv
xpost

what's the alternative to working in a factory? everything else in life.

when did I say anyone should be working in a factory? I think its weird that you assume my conception of "people making stuff" = state-capitalist factory slavery. Which is not really what I meant to imply at all - I prefer furniture made by my friends, for example, or food that comes from someone I know who knows how to farm, or a homemade musical instrument, or handmade clothes, etc.

(ie things produced via "everything else in life")

building stuff is fun but building stuff in mass quantity not so fun at all

which would you prefer as a skill, dumpster diving or sewing?

Just to be clear, I certainly didn't mean to imply that Dehli's slums are the result of people *wanting* to live off the waste of others and not *knowing how* to better themselves. I'm not sure if that's what Shakey meant either though.

This article seems apposite On the mend. Warning! Contains a picture of John Harris.

I don't think it's mooching. It's not utopian, though, unlike veganism and other philosophies. One cannot build a perfect world upon freeganism, since it relies upon the existence of an imperfect world. Which, perhaps, makes "freeganism" somewhat more postmodern than veganism.

DUDE, MANSON WAS A FREEGAN! JUST LIKE NAZIS WERE VEGETARIANS!

He even wrote a song about it!

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y49/picturesref/Crimth.jpg

makes me think of when people move house, and shift all this furniture with them for no reason, they should leave it in the house for the next person

ugh, crimethinc

ppl bitching about dumpster diving/freeganism/whatever in this thread seem to be operating under the same to-hell-with-it-then delusion milo had about michael moore being irrelevent if he doesnt change america into a utopian socialist paradise with every film - yes, dumpstering rich ppls old shit wouldnt be feasible if everyone did it, but neither would any alternative practiced by anyone on this thread

and yeah ppl talking about it as a movement or whatever sound dumb, just like self-appointed representatives of any cultural trend sound dumb in nyt articles, what the fuck ever

The university where I work turns move out time into a campus wide free garage sale. NYU needs to get with the times.

But it seems like this Weissman guy, by claiming freeganism is essential to an *ethical lifestyle*, is necessarily claiming that it IS something everyone should adopt.

I have no problem with it as an alternative lifestyle or whatever, I just don't like the moral superiority that can potentially come with it.

if that's the case then that's stupid. I didn't read the article b/c I've heard of this before, I just assumed that the point of freeganism wasn't so much about "EVERYONE SHOULD ADOPT THIS LIFESTYLE"

for me the point of dumpster diving food and books and furniture and shit is that me and my friends are too poor to get shit like that otherwise and its fun to go looking for stuff

I'm sure the point is different for different people.

kind of like... everything

http://www.k12.hi.us/~loogata/artonline/graphics/thinker.jpg

hahaha

TRASH PICKING: WHAT YOU TAKE AWAY FROM IT IS YOUR BUSINESS

actually could be an example of this?

New Austerity Aesthetic and the decline of Conspicuous Consumption: When?

also why shouldnt people encourage others to re-use existing stuff instead of throwing away and buying new?

They should, obv.

I don't think anyone here is arguing against that.

then good, and lets hope we can all manage not to get too upset by associated moral superiority

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,2149141,00.html

didn't read it all the way through but: £320 worth of perfectly edible groceries out of the skip behind M&S in one go!

"Marks & Spencer's policy - if it is a policy - of leaving open access to the bins gets a thumbs-up from the freegans. At other supermarkets in this city they've found the food has had rotten milk, blue dye or even bleach poured over it. Sainsbury's compact all the waste food before binning it, while Tesco keep their bins locked until the rubbish trucks come. The freegans had only two complaints about Marks & Spencer. One is about the grotesque amount of packaging - virtually nothing is sold loose, it seems. The lunch I cooked did generate a fully stuffed carrier bag full of plastic and polythene. The other concerns all the packets of peeled and sliced fruit and veg that turn up in the bin - 'They do it for lazy lunchtime customers, and it's gone off by evening. It's very annoying.'"

"I did, in the end, warn the guests for the freegan lunch in advance. My friend Holger, who is a bit of a hippy, approved: he only wanted to remind me that he didn't eat meat. So he got a Haddock Mornay Meal for One (£2.99), complete with individual compartments of pre-made mash, peas and carrots. Vegetarians always eat worse."

am beginning to doubt the quality of the journalism on this one. or the quality of the vegetarian.

A lot of odd attitude in this thread. Some people get some stuff out of the garbage. Some of those people think this is a lifestyle. What's the problem?

Also But if you want to see what living with less is really like go live in the Delhi slums. is kind of missing the point. There's a big difference between living with less and wanting to live in a slum.

haha! M&S garbage has too much garbage? It's nice that they leave the bins open though.

I kind of forgot that materialism is kind of bad and I've been consuming more than usual this year. Whoops.

lots of missing the point on purpose in this thread

I fucking wrote an amazing short story about this many years ago and completely sat on it. Back when I was kind of 'making it up.' Except the characters took it a step beyond, three roommates. One worked in grocery, and him and another guy worked together to steal groceries from their workplace. Another guy worked in cable, and black-boxed himself for free TV and stole internet from the neighbors. The third was fucking the landlord for free rent for all of them (which conveniently included heat/power). One starts getting obsessed with it and strives to make the house zero-upkeep, one desperately wants to quit doing it, and one who thinks the other two are going mental.

post it!

That Delhi zinger is a good encapsulation of my idea for a reality show to pitch to MTV - The REAL Real World.

I always wanted something like this only it would have to be super high-concept: "find out what happens when we take people's money away and also stop filming them or allowing anybody to pay any attention to any of their problems no matter how pressing"

Freeganism: a lifestyle built upon the same bedrock as middle-American mothers' post-prandial clean plate club recruitment drives.

ie There are people starving in etc.

I doubt I still have the story anymore-- I did it at my parents house, so if it exists in soft copy, it's on their old, broken computer. This was a fair bit before Gmail :(

i have done a fair amount of high-class (farmer's market) dumpster diving (not really dumpsters - end-of-the-day boxes of discarded, often totally perfect fruit&veg) in the last couple of months. it has been pretty awesome.

i still do not have another tv. and that is okay. internet is good.

Totally, rw. Anyone who survived the Depression would call it "life", or possibly "making do". For instance, my great-grandmother called it "making god-awful ugly house slippers out of every single mismatched color of reclaimed yarn I can find in Detroit and its outlying suburbs because it's perfectly good yarn, how could people waste this??".

yeah, maybe the neatest thing, besides foooed, about dumpster diving at the market is meeting the other people who are doing it and trying to figure out the whys of it all - i can see the depression-era mentality for sure. but totally all kinds - dudes on beat-up bikes, chinese women with their kids, old italian couples, middle-aged french ladies, pretty girls in their 20s, etc etc. all friendly and into sharing stuff.

also, i am becoming a bit obsessed with Detroit or the idea of detroit

Buy my friend's book!!

http://www.randomhouse.com/images/dyn/cover/?source=9780385511407&height=300&maxwidth=170

omg

so how do we feel about this post-recession then

It is my contention that the USA is destined in the next couple of decades to become the world's most stupendous garage sale bazaar, with people traveling here from all over the world to scavenge the slow disengorgement of all the stuff that has accumulated here. If all goes according to plan, the Chinese and Indians will become avid collectors of Americana, and a reverant Warhol Museum will be opened in Shanghai.

Lots of my friends dumpster dive, and they'll discover half-day old vegetables and unopened pasta and all kinds of good stuff and cook up a huge meal. I see nothing wrong with this. The idea that it enables consumer waste is some massive BS.

I'll leave the dumpster food to the people who really need it to survive.

It is my contention that the USA is destined in the next couple of decades to become the world's most stupendous garage sale bazaar, with people traveling here from all over the world to scavenge the slow disengorgement of all the stuff that has accumulated here. If all goes according to plan, the Chinese and Indians will become avid collectors of Americana, and a reverant Warhol Museum will be opened in Shanghai.

― Aimless, Saturday, March 6, 2010 6:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

but yeah, Americans have so much (expensive/desirable/useful) shit, and are about to have so little money

I'll leave the dumpster food to the people who really need it to survive.

― Jeff, Saturday, March 6, 2010 7:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^^^^^^

Is there that much competition for it?

depends on where you live but i feel like there's enough to go around

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that about 95% of the edible dumpster food goes to waste. It's not like slipping into a soup kitchen for a free meal.

socialized food would be a nice utopian idea...i mean besides food stamps and soup kitchens.