Related to yesterday's post about the negative connotations to the word "begging" and asking for food that would be thrown away, I'd like to talk a little about dumpster diving. Like Brendan's dad said in comment, it basically just seems easier to dumpster dive than to try and find the right person to get permission to be given the leftovers or just-expired items. Plus, there's a feeling of excitement to it. Let me relate a recent experience to try and share that feeling.
Dressed in black jeans and black hoodie, armed with rechargeable flashlight and a reusable bag, led by my trusted partner Brendan, the nearby grocery store dumpster was my destination. We left the house around 10:30pm to give the store employees ample time to clean up and go home after the store closed at 9pm, and soon stealthily rounded the corner by the store. Our reward for the trek was ample. King cakes galore, banana nut muffins, macaroons, bags of lettuce, mini-cinnamon rolls...nearly everything with a sell-by date of that day, some with the day after.
Okay, so my black jeans and black hoodie are not so much a ninja outfit as they are the only jeans and hoodie I brought with, but the feeling of being undercover and super-cool remained. But dumpster diving isn't just a fun pasttime. For many, it's a lifestyle, one I think Brendan and I are becoming more and more enmeshed in. Check out http://freegan.info/ and read about "What is a freegan?" and it very well describes much of what we're trying to do, except for the squatting part, though we do Couchsurf.
Reading through websites like that just makes me wonder what more I can be doing. What else can I recycle, even in an incredibly recycling-unfriendly city like New Orleans? Can we be even more diligent about dumpster-diving, so ultimately we don't spend any money on groceries? Do I ever need to buy new things, like gifts for people, or can I always give found items or made-from-recycled-goods items? I guess it's okay to have a balance, and that's kind of how we're doing it now. Buying things like milk and eggs and enough fruits and veggies when we can't find them to make sure we're still eating healthy. Anyway, to quote L.M. Montgomery's Marigold, "Isn't it all so int'resting?"
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4 comments:
Jakob gave me a used book (cost: $5) for Christmas, and it was possibly the best gift I received this year.
However, this is a book that both of us have read and talked about at length, and though used, it was signed by the author and it looked like it have been never read. It may not have taken anything away from the gift if it were obviously used, but I'm not sure.
I didn't even get Jakob anything! :(
You could , of course, go to a food pantry and get food and other items (toiletries, etc). It's not begging and is available usually by showing some proof of residence. And if you wish to be proactive - why not ask these grocery stores to donate their discards to food pantrys? Expiration dates are usually sell by dates not use by dates. They will be marked as such.
OK, so i read carefully all your info on dumpster diving..i think when you get such great things like the prego jars...kudos to you! as a mom i just ask that you be super carefull...it'd be tragic to get stuck with a dirty needle! it'd not be healthy to get cut on broken glass either! i love you guys!!
Hey Aunt Ei,
It's not that we don't have the funds to buy food. We're doing okay in that regards. It's that we've become a part of a movement to reduce waste. The discarded food (and clothes and furniture) that businesses throw out everyday is a symptom of the overproduction that contributed to this economic mess we find ourselves entangled in. There's more than enough of everything we need to go around if we make a concerted effort to waste not, want not. And so, since other people don't avoid waste, we can avoid want by making good use of what would otherwise just fill a landfill.
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