A Freegan Dumpster Diving Blog

back in the game but lagging

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i'm finally back in copenhagen, and back to a fridge and freezer both full of great bread. it's a wonderful thing to come home to.

unfortunately (and actually, it really is a shame), you can't live off bread. so we went out diving to see if any of our locals have improved. unfortunately not. we found:

loaf of bread
15 buns
18 eggs
6 litres of orange juice
flodeboller (you don't want to know)

our nearest (and previously best) supermarket is still keeping their bins inside. aldi is still awful (shouldn't complain, we got eggs and juice), and the dogn netto dumpsters stank. rancid mucus. the irma bins were completely empty.

we found our fun elsewhere.

dumpster diving videos

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i'm currently on the move, so to fill the void i thought i'd post a couple of videos i've been sitting on for a while, all worth watching.

this first is a sixish minute documentary from travis sheilds, meet the freegans.

then there's a slightly longer documentary called skipping meals, which gets bonus points for not using the word 'freegan'.

and finally there was short piece on the telegraph website dumpster diving with the freegans.

what i like about these videos is they all feature reasonably normal people. normal enough. maybe the word i'm looking for is respectable? the divers don't come across like obsessive idiots, which is how a lot of us in the north american press have been portrayed (it's not the interviewees fault). the dumpster divers in the above films are not being shown as freaks for the masses to laugh at, they're smart and generally well spoken.

what i'm not so keen on is the naming of specific supermarkets. they wont like it, and they'll react. and not by wasting less food, they'll just make it harder for us to take it. but then i'm sure the telegraph doesn't care about that.

roskilde dumpster diving

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we just returned from the roskilde festival, which should explain our recent lack of posts. and whilst there wasn't much to do in the way of dumpster diving on the festival site, there were plenty of opportunities for preying on other people's waste, which was in great abundance (waste in abundance, something seems wrong about that sentence). as a vegetarian i found it quite difficult, what with the vast majority of food being meat, but i managed.

it scared me how much nachos people were eating. if only you could survive on leftover chilli peppers.

our highlight was when, after seeing me ask a guy if he was really about to throw away that broccoli and feta pancake, a couple of female workers gave us meal vouchers. that was pure festival magic. and then when the festival is over, everyone just leaves all their stuff behind. it almost feels like stealing.

anyway, now we're back and our fridge was approaching a sorry state of emptiness. so:

1kg sugary breakfast cereal
12 bread rolls
18 buns
9 ciabattas
4 loaves
2kg carrots
250g cherry tomatoes
3 onions

the bad news is that our local, and previously all time favourite dumpster, has disappeared. it looks like they've started storing them inside. this is extremely annoying because we know it's not our fault, we've had no trouble there and never left any traces of our presence. first the food stopped appearing, and now the bins. and it all coincided with a nearby street that until recently was occupied with much fun and festivities. nevermind. there's plenty of other dumpsters.

freegan magazine

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i'm still in a critical mood, so i'll pick on freegan magazine. and i'm totally allowed to, because they're directly taking a whole bunch of my writing (hello there) without asking or telling me. i believe in the creative commons and hate copyright, so i don't actually mind them doing it, yet. because it's not like they can claim non-commercial use with all those adverts pasted across their pages.

this isn't my criticism, that they're not creating their own content but stealing it instead (isn't it actually quite fitting?). it's this sentence i don't like:

The Freegan dumpster diving frenzy that is occurring across the United States and other countries is attributed to the higher cost of fuel and food where consumers are looking to save money and the environment.

which is bullshit. wasn't the point of freeganism (stop me if i'm wrong here) to remove yourself from the evils of a "complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production"? not to save money.

and the higher cost of food? in the pursuit of ever more competitive prices (also ever higher profit margins, don't forget what's actually important), food production has been industrialised to the point of disaster. and, as said above, that is what freeganism is against. there's a reason why 'ethical' food (organic, locally grown and fairly traded) is expensive. it's because that's how much it costs. maybe the problem is that people aren't willing to pay the actual (and fair) cost of food anymore.

as for attributing it to the higher cost of fuel, and claiming to be trying to save the environment in the same sentence, how does that make any sense? infact, what does the high cost of fuel have to do with anything?

finally, dumpster diving is not a frenzy occuring across anywhere. worded like that it sounds like a current trend. or a fad. dumspter diving has been happening as long as "supply and demand" has existed, and not since the media got interested and people started giving it stupid names.

"The best things in life are Freegan". no, the best things in life aren't things at all.

anyway, i'm going to go back to being nice now. constructive and helpful. hopefully.

a nasty woman attacks

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someone baited me with this horrible piece of writing, which is for the best part nothing but a nasty and simplistic reaction to the mainstream media coverage of dumspter diving (shouldn't you know better?). i was going to ignore it, which is the best way to deal with people who pride themselves on being opinionated and politically incorrect (annoying), but there was something about the slew of unnecessary insults and badly thought out arguements i just couldn't let go. and it's important for two reasons, specifically it shows how easily dumpster diving is misunderstood (she has completely missed the point), and more generally it shows how wrong things go when people forge their opinions based solely on what the media says.

so, her main point seems to be summed up by the fourth paragraph:

But you must wonder if the compactors, freecyclers, freegans, frugalists, garbage pickers, and dumpster divers really just hate their own lives, and hate others for being happy, enjoying an increasing standard of living, or building a life of luxury. For certain, they hate the advancements that capitalism brings us, and they hate that consumers have so many choices for making their lives better, and oftentimes at lower costs and using less time.

there are a number of assumptions being made that need pointing out. the first is that all dumpster divers have a choice regarding their situation, which is clearly not true. the majority of homeless people are not homeless by choice. and when a student is heavily in debt, can you blame them for living off garbage that no one else wants? (or should only the upper class be allowed education?)

the term "freegan" does imply choice, but her knowledge of freegans seems limited to the unsurprisingly narrowminded media attention they've recieved. this is probably where the second asumption comes from, that freegans are unambitious, lazy, and don't contribute to society. presuming so reduces everyone down to nothing but consumers. many freegans do have jobs, and many also contribute to society in ways that can't be measured by economics, and in ways that benefit the whole of humanity, not just the top 5%. what they definately don't do is hurt the bottom 80%. dumpster divers are not "bums/freeloaders/losers", they're not living off others in a way that deprives anyone of anything (apart from maybe each other, if they get too greedy). they simply live off the waste, the stuff that someone else has decided they don't wont and rather than passing it on to someone in need (as 'food not bombs' does) has attempted to selfishly destroy it. dumpster divers cause no harm, we just take advantage (something all good capitalists should understand). we reduce waste that would otherwise go to landfill and help feed a few hungry mouths. so why the spiteful comments? where is her hate coming from?

well she's clearly annoyed about the words that we apparently call ourselves, and here me and her might be able to agree - i hate these words too. there's nothing worse than a loaded word (such as freegan or frugal) being blanket applied to a large and diverse group of people, especially if it leads to all of the above assumptions. but who was it exactly that called us frugal? or even freegan for that matter? was it one of us using the "propagandist we"? or was it the mindless media, attracted to catchy names and over simplified concepts, like flies to shit? and anyway freecycling is just a scaled up gift economics. don't be so fucking uptight and selfish.

apparently i hate other people's "happiness". unlike the wrath the dumpster divers seem to have incurred, the only hate i have is for those who intentionally or knowingly cause harm. why do we have to hate each other? is there not room enough for all our worlds to coexist? the "advancements" that capitalism has brought us include a grotesque wealth disparity (national and international), sweatshop labour, to the brink of environmental disaster, the destruction of public space and a marketing machine so strong it permeates our lives completely. it leaves very little room for much all else. so no, i guess we can't coexist.

sure, if you win the international birth lottery (congratulations, but don't try and tell me you're affluence comes from hard work) you can live a life of luxury, even an ethical one if you're rich enough, but it's still at the expense of other people. and unfortunately, for her argument at least, we can't all have elitist jobs such as "physicists, accountants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, insurance agents" (i think we'd be better doing away with at least three of those anyway). where would your life of luxury be without the factory workers and the service industry toiling away beneath you (yes, like slaves) for little reward.

another one of my favourite paragraphs:

These free-wandering types strike the average person as being losers who don't want to work a job and who can't make it in the world of hard work and achievement. So they conjure up every excuse to "live the simpleton life," exclaiming that it "makes them happy" to be nothing, have nothing, and strive for nothing.

whilst speaking for the "average person". smooth. so am i right to conclude from this that all human progress and endeavour leads to materialism? how does she dare claim to know what can and can't make other people happy? and it doesn't take looking at many surveys to show that all our fantastic progress hasn't actually made us any happier.

Of course, foraging for food involves two things worth pointing out: trespassing on private property uninvited, and opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is that it takes a lot of time to bypass the efficiencies and conveniences of capitalism, and revert to barbarian ways.

as mentioned above, capitalism is only convenient for the top few perecent of the population, those who live a "life of luxury" (and were most likely born into it), whilst everyone else in the world struggles and scrapes. as for being barbaric, i think you'll find it is capitalism that is "brutal, cruel, warlike [and] insensitive". no one ever started a war because they didn't want something.

as for trespassing, dumpster diving (especially this aspect of it) is legal in nearly all countries. but let's not get started on the flimsy concept of 'private property', which is for a completely different and much angrier discussion.

the 'article' falls completely to pieces by the end, ranting on about the "abundances of the marketplace are not a reason to condemn the human race and reduce yourself to living like a pauper", which makes no sense at all. it's those abundances (and unavoidable failings of supply and demand economics) that creates so much waste and enable us to live like we do. she finishes with a bitter as anything:

Just don't expect that I won't notice - and criticize - their hatred for humans, progress, and our civilized way of life.

i wonder if she also hates zero-carbon footprint people for not embracing cheap flights? or vegans for boycotting animal cruelty? human progress is taking our world apart. and i wont apologise for sounding like an anarcho-primitivist when it's the world, and hence the whole of humanity, that is at stake. your "civilized way of life" is destroying forests, poisoning and emptying the sea, polluting the air and, thanks to globalization, oppressing your fellow humans. it also seems to be making you quite hateful. there is nothing civilized about you at all.