Record Details:

Freegan Info (How to Find Free Food, Living Sustainably w/o Money) (www.freegan.info)

Organization: OnLine Resource
Facility Type: Info/Hotline
Status: Open

Address:
, WW 00000

Region:
County/Parish:

This organization provides Temporary or Permanent Service? Temporary

Notes:

See article in the Boston Globe (December 2009)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/03/freegans_deploring_waste_dine_well_on_discarded_food/

By Billy Baker
Globe Correspondent / December 3, 2009

CAMBRIDGE - Spring Greeney started eating food out of dumpsters shortly after she graduated from Harvard University.

She does not do it because she is hungry or broke. She does it to make a statement.

“I find it amazing and depressing to see all the good food that goes to waste,’’ Greeney said last week as she sat in her Cambridge kitchen and watched one of her roommates, Adam Talsma, toast bagels he had collected from a supermarket dumpster.

Greeney, who graduated from Harvard in June and who works for a state environmental agency, is part of a small but growing movement of anticonsumerists, often referred to as “freegans,’’ who promote the minimal consumption of resources by salvaging what society discards.

Born in the mid-’90s out of the antiglobalization and environmental movements, freeganism can include everything from salvaging clothes and furniture left out on trash day to diving into dumpsters looking for fruits and vegetables that are thrown out by supermarkets and restaurants.

Loosely organized around the website freegan.info, the movement has spread globally. Locally, adherents say they are attracted to the movement by a variety of reasons: environmental, social, or economic.

Greeney, who got involved this summer after she moved in with a group of MIT students, thinks of it as a statement against “profligate waste.’’ Talsma, an MIT senior, sees it as a way to get in touch with that waste face to face.

“The first time I jumped into a dumpster,’’ Talsma said, “I was like, ’What?’ I grew up in Central America, and the fact that dumpsters were full of excellent food was something I couldn’t get my mind around.’’

The idea of eating food out of a dumpster can be shocking and of questionable legality (a Boston police spokesman said there are no laws against dumpster diving, but if the dumpster is on private property you can run into trespassing issues). But what surprises people the most, freegans say, is that they don’t just eat, they eat well.

“When I came back from my first big dumpster dive, I laid out all the food on my kitchen table and took a photo,’’ said Julia Golomb, 23, of Somerville. “It looked like a stand at a farmer’s market. It was beautiful and bountiful.’’

Golomb says she became interested in freeganism when, for no particular reason, she lifted the lid on a dumpster behind a Whole Foods Market.

“There were all of these organic bananas, and I felt a lot of sadness to think that this food was grown and then shipped across the world only to end up in a dumpster and, eventually, a landfill.’’

Freegans, many of whom tend to be young and educated, say there is often a guilt associated with harvesting so much.

“The first time I went, I was thinking there were people who need this food more than us; maybe we shouldn’t take it,’’ Talsma said.

Golomb said that when she first started dumpster-diving, her approach was to take everything salvageable and make it her mission to make sure it did not go to waste. “Now, I’ve had to become desensitized,’’ she said. “There’s just too much, and I realized I cannot single-handedly be responsible for distributing all that food.’’

Once you learn what can be salvaged, freegans say, you can get almost everything you need without reaching for your wallet. Suburban grocery stores are gold mines; urban markets tend to have trash compactors.

Greeney, Talsma and their two roommates say they have lowered their monthly food bill to about $100 each.

“I have so much bread that I get on my bike, put the bread in my basket, and ride around town and give it to people,’’ Golomb said. When they ask where it came from, she’ll tell them how sad it is that bakeries throw out this great bread at the end of the day, and she’s just trying to share it. “But I’ll leave out the image of me rooting in a trash can,’’ she said.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Info Source/Changes:

Created At: Tue Dec 08 07:56:45 +0000 2009
Updated At: Tue Dec 08 08:01:02 +0000 2009
Updated By: tfri

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