Freegans - Living off of American Excess

[forrest]

Who would've thought you could score free stuff without having to win or steal it? And save the world at the SAME TIME!
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=200602201257323

More info:
http://www.freegan.info/

As cliche (and almost pointless) as is it to say, someday our kids will have to confront the malignancies created by our careless wasting and polluting. Since reforms are pretty much out of the question, I think we all ought to take the advice of Mohandus M. Gandhi, and "be the change we'd like to see".

Even though most folks would be rather disgusted by the idea of picking through dumpsters, you'd be amazed at some of the stuff people find. Hell, it's even as easy as asking your local bakery for leftovers; that's how me and my buddies get food to donate to FoodNotBombs.

The point is, we're living in a country where people throw WHOLE BUILDINGS away, and we have to realize that just because someone threw something away doesn't mean it's trash.

On Wednesday (trash day), go take a peek in the dumpster of say, Best Buy, or Safeway. Stores will even throw shit away if the packaging is damaged, or if there's overstock. Half the time, there's nothing even wrong with the product itself.

[LIBRA]

Great post!! I love freegans!! Im always too chicken to dig by myself, I need to find other people and dive. A friend of mine worked at a college cleaning dorms and the kids would throw away so much stuff, she would always come home with great finds. She doesnt work there anymore but she does clean offices and finds great stuff in there trash.

I see nothing wrong with it, and I dont understand how people can throw away usable items. They can always donate it somewhere. Pure laziness.

[Unkle_John]

... i prefer dumpster diver.

[CowboyHippy]

i think back before the board switched to this new format there was a dumpster diving thread that had some pretty good tips and what people were scoring.

i'm sitting on a bunch of 4'x5' windows and 2x4's right now

plus side to working construction for the most part, downside is storing all the stuff till i build a house with it

[PEACE FROG]

When I was a boy we used to dive the dumpster at the Payless drug store. Total score. We'd come home with unbelievable findings.

[Unkle_John]

Heck yeah. We had Ben Franklin drug stores where I grew up. One year my cousins and I dove behind there and found BOXES of thrown out Cadbury Easter Eggs. Oh man, we almost slipped into diabetic comas over the next two weeks. There was so much!!!

[redthewitch75]

Thanks for the links...great info. I'm not ashamed to say that I've been a dumpster diver for a while!

[Crochety Carpenter]

I hated it when our dumps switched from land fills to transfer stations. We used to come home with almost as much as we left.

[CowboyHippy]

it's a postponement of the process but a town away there is a large recycling center (as opposed to our town which is a large divided dumpster with maked bins)

i go there about once a month and drop off magazines and other stuff our place doesnt take, and while i am there i browse the selection of reading material. lots of good magazines a month or 2 old. i'll read them and drop them off a while later. often enough i'll picku up corrugated boxes for shipping stuff out i sell on ebay. hopefully they get recycled on the other end

[hedgewitch]

Dumpster Diving is illegal in the UK (not sure about the rest of the world) and if you get caught you will be prosecuted.
Prosecuted for stealing someones rubbish - how forked up is that!