As darkness falls over Manhattan and thousands of pounds of garbage are set on sidewalks, a small group of people known as freegans descend upon the mounds of trash like bugs to a flame. It’s called dumpster diving, but for freegans it’s how they eat. Freegans pick through trash for weekly groceries.
Between 9 p.m. and midnight, almost anything that can be found on a supermarket’s shelves, can also be found in a supermarket’s trash. If it is still edibile, the Freegans scoop it up.
Freegans are not just dumpster divers, but a subculture of people that reject capitalism and globalization on ethical grounds, and who believe that these systems are the cause of almost everything harmful in the world, from global warming to starving children in third world countries. They actively avoid making or using money and believe that their practices will help lead capitalism to, what they say, will be its inevitable collapse.
Although rejecting civilization is an age-old concept, freegans did not start to form a recognized subculture until the mid-1990s, and have only begun to gain mainstream recognition over the last several years.
“I became actively involved because it made sense to me that if there is food in the trash, like anything else, that people throw out, that is perfectly good, that it makes sense to take from there than to keep on consuming more,” said Janet Kalish, 45, who lives in Richmond Hill, Queens, but usually dumpster dives in Manhattan twice a week.
On Saturday and Monday nights freegans like Kalish who are involved with freegan.info, a website dedicated to information on and for freegans, invite the media and anyone interested in diving on a trash tour of the garbage on the East 30’s and Third Avenue. People of all ages and from all walks of life attend the tours, some because they can’t afford to buy food, others because they diligently practice freeganism.
On a recent Monday night tour, the divers efficiently sifted through the trash and made quick decisions about what looked best to take and what was better left for the garbage trucks. Kalish said that a lot of food is double packaged and usually had just expired that day. Produce, not packaged at all, but often mixed with rotten food and other trash, is just as popular on the tours as the items that have been vacuums sealed or that come in boxes.
“We take common sense precautions,” when it comes to choosing safe food to take, said Adam Weissman, 30, a volunteer at the tour. With produce, he said, they take “the same food precautions you’d take with things in your refrigerator, wash things appropriately, throw away things that look spoiled.”
Even in the trash, there is an obvious disparity between bruised and rotten fruit and fruit that has browned slightly. No one on the tour had ever heard of anyone getting sick from eating what they found in garbage bags.
“It starts off hit or miss whether or not we’re going to find good food in the garbage,” said Kalish. “After a while we learn that certain places are reliable.”
She said it is the conglomerates which throw out the most unspoiled food. That waste disturbs freegans,but also provides them with a free week’s groceries.
The tours usually start with some of the biggest food chains in the city, Gristedes, D’Agastinos, and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Freegans said they often run into people hungrily digging through dumpsters who are homeless or can’t afford to buy food. But everyone is willing to share, they said.
On the tour, one young woman sifting through a bag of lettuce graciously helped an older woman, who had difficulty bending over the trash, by filling her bag with the produce she requested, Kalish offered the others her best finds before bagging it for herself, and when two people reached for the same piece of fruit, they were both quick to ask the other if he or she wanted it, instead of greedily placing it in his or her own bag.
“I have a goal every time to take more than I can eat and share it. I often fulfill that goal,” Kalish said. “There are people that ask for food and I am able to share. They realize that we are not kidding when we say yes, free food and they go on to join trash tours after that. People are very grateful. They like to get free stuff, we all like to get free stuff.”
Freegans may not pay for the food they find, but they do expend more time and effort than the average grocery shopper. It can take hours to find what an average consumer can pick up in five minutes.
Strict freegans dedicate every aspect of their lives to living free and vegan, which includes no jobs, no money, no rent, no cars, no animal byproducts and no pollution. It also means self reliance, generosity, community cohesiveness and cooperation, and social concern.
“My becoming a freegan was a progression of questioning all aspects of my consumption,” said Weissman, who has been eating food from the trash for 13 years. “I moved towards different aspects of freeganism at different parts of my life.”
Weissman, gave a passionate 30 minute speech mid-way through the trash tour about his freegan beliefs and various reasons he volunteers at the tours and for freegan.info.
“One reason for the tours is to let people see first hand, in very concrete terms, what retail waste looks like; to take a few stores and point them out as a microcosm of a much larger problem,” he said. Weissman spoke in front of a bounty salvaged from a D’Agostino’s nightly garbage, enough food to fill about 40 grocery bags.
He explained that studies have shown that supermarkets are less wasteful than other businesses that sell food, but still waste enough to feed at least a dozen people from one day’s trash. Weissman pointed to a display he had arranged of copious amounts of edible, but trash picked fruits, vegetables, cookies, drinks, jarred garlic, and other goods that had either expired that day or were bruised.
Weissman’s progression into freeganism led him to a life where he now “floats” between homes in Brooklyn or Teaneck, N.J., refuses to use a refrigerator unless it’s being used by others already, has no job, travels by razor scooter, and passionately preaches his philosophy. But others who consider themselves part of the subculture do not live as frigid a freegan life. And there are still others who take part in some freegan activities but do not consider themselves truly freegan at all.
“It is a mixture of different subcultures,” explained Chris Simpson, 26, originally from Dallas, Texas, where he first started dumpster diving. He said that he got into freeganism because it was along the lines of a punk rock, anarchist lifestyle that he associated with at one time and that he now tries to live as waste free as possible.
He usually has a job as an audio engineer, hasn’t dumpster dived in five years since he now has money to buy food, still subscribes to the freegan views about capitalism’s wastefulness, but “I guess I wouldn’t consider myself a freegan,” Simpson said.
“Just because you have a job doesn’t necessarily mean that you are or are not a freegan,” Simpson said. “Because in today’s society there are a lot of cases where you do have to have money, you do have to be able to get around, but it’s more of not contributing to huge corporate companies that are overcharging for stuff that are considered necessities,” he said. “I mean, we all have to eat.”