Satya Part 2
12. Is there a practical guide to freeganism in NYC? Or for the homeless?
People with internet access can visit freegan.info for many practical tips on everything from squatting (http://freegan.info/?page=Squatting ) to urban foraging(http://freegan.info/?page=UrbanForaging). We also have an online directory of choice locations to visit for choice foraging finds (http://freegan.info/?page=LocalDirectories) and hold hold group trash tours every week and introductory workshops every month. (schedule online at http://freegan.info/?page=Events and a print version of the schedule can be provided on request by calling Janet at 347-724-6954). We pass our the print event schedules when we give away the goods we've amassed to outreach to new people, including homeless people, and encourage them to participate in our future activities. In Our Hearts Collective publishes a print "dumpster map"(inourhearts@gmail.com for details).
Wildman Steve Brill offers lots of useful info on foraging wild growing plants and mushrooms from urban parks at http://wildmanstevebrill.com/ ,in books like Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not-So-Wild) Places, and in his wild foraging tours of urban parks (schedule posted on the website).
Times Up holds bicycle repair workshops several times a week (http://www.times-up.org/bike_workshop.php)
1. Do you feel you are taking food away from folks who really need it, like the homeless or city rats?
The United States has an estimated 3 million homeless people, yet the estimated population of the United States is almost 300 million. According to a USDA-commissioned study, 40-50% of all food in the United States is wasted--96 billion pounds of food worth approximately $100 billion dollars! This means we waste enough food to feed every homeless person 100 times over! So scarcity is a non-issue--there's enough to go around. So scarcity of resources isn't the issue--inappropriate distribution is.
Freegans believe in going beyond charity, building mutually supportive communities to empower people to claim these resources for their own needs and for others. Our dinner events and trash tours include everyone from retired corporate executives to students to teachers to homeless people, foraging together, preparing food together, building affinity across class lines. While in no way blind to the differences in privilege between our respect situations, we are working to create a model where the needs of all are met irrespective of income--where we facilitate methods for people to feed, clothe, house, entertain, and transport themselves without employment or capital. Rather than tossing people crumbs to help them survive on the bottom rung of the capitalist economic ladder, we are working to liberate them of that system altogether.
In the process, we undermine this culture's traditional notions of success and failure, notions that leave many homeless people more willing to beg for quarters to buy inadequate food rather than "lowering themselves" to getting food discarded by stores. We've been convinced that being successful and productive in this culture means making lots of money to have the ability to buy lots of stuff. Acquiring second-hand or wasted goods is variously seen as embarrassing or tragic, particularly when we've been trained to believe that goods acquired anywhere other than on a retail store shelf are suspect. Yet when groups of diverse people turn rummage through retail trash into a festive, cooperative event, we effectively rewrite the script. Observers see a group of directed, organized people, too busy a great time recovering useable goods to feel ashamed or embarrassed.. Pity and contempt are replaced by curiosity, appreciation, and solidarity, something we've realize from countless conversations with passersby of all economic strata-- many of whom end up joining in!
One of the most vital challenges that projects like Freegan.info's trash tours face is developing strategies to make these projects accessible to more homeless people. Freegan.info does this in part by passing out flyers with our schedule of activities as we walk the streets of Manhattan, distributing the foods and other items we've collected to anyone who wants them. Even those who have no problem gathering goods on their own from retail refuse enjoy the added sense of community of the group endeavor. It's also important to remember that hunger in New York City isn't limited to the homeless-- according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger more than one in seven New Yorkers are live in a food insecure household-- where someone has gone hungry or faced the brink of hungersometimes chronicallywithin the last year. And many homeless people and low-income workers, have no concept of the enormous volume of useable goods discarded every day. For these people, participation in our tours can be the difference between hunger and access to an endless supply of fresh, healthy food and all manner of other useable goods.
Beyond providing a service to these people though, our goal is to empower people through engagement in mutual aid projects. We welcome people not only to come to our events to learn our information and insights, but to share theirs and to directly participate in gathering goods for our collective meals, our individual needs, and to give away to others.. We believe that people can feel a far greater sense of worth being part of a community where they have something to share along with something to receive, where they can feel that they are participating rather than being served, and where everyone benefits from participation, as opposed to having a divide between those providing service and those being served.
Having said this, we aren't blind to the reality that a disproportionate number of people who participate in our activities come from circumstances of relative privilege and that to some degree we reflect the disproportionate whiteness of anti-consumerist movements, though perhaps far less than many other projects with similar ideals. One of the goals we've discussed is making more of an effort to bring homeless people into the planning phases of our activities so that they can feel like fully enfranchised members of our community and so that we can organize our activities in ways that are more responsive to their needs and considerate of the unique realities and challenges they face. It's also important, in my opinion, that we do more to include low-income workers and non-Engish speaking people.
As for rats, I can honestly say that in years of foraging, I have never once seen a rat in a New York City trash bag. These bags are tossed outside stores generally around 9 PM and are collected by sanitation workers with 1-3 hours. Rats tend to make themselves scarce until far later at night than the time these bags are collected, so they never find their way into them, and in general tend to avoid such public places as the well-lit curb in front a supermarket storefront. In any case, if someday the rats decide they want a piece of the action, there's certainly more than enough to go around.
13. Be honest, have you ever gotten stuck in a dumpster?
No. I do very little actual climbing into dumpsters. In Manhattan, very few stores use dumpsters, but instead discard bags on the curb. Still, I've certainly climbed into dumpsters in suburbs and it's never been a problem. Pretty fun, actually.
14. Will you go to a restaurant on a date or would you take them dumpster diving?
Why has time for dating? I spend almost every day doing interviews like this!
15. What did you have for lunch today?
Coconut, mango, taro root, banana and okra.
16. Where do you usually go for breakfast?
My refrigerator. I restock my fridge about once a week during our group foraging expeditions. I constantly find far more than I can use at city supermarkets. In fact, I usually find so much that I gather all that I have the strength to carry, redistribute as much as I can to people I run into on the street on my way to the bus station, often giving way about 30 pounds of food, and STILL am left with a week's worth of food!
17. Describe a typical foraging expedition.
18. Which NYC Veg restaurants have the best garbage?
Prepare-to-order restaurants in NY, from my experience, waste far less food than other food businesses--bakeries, supermarkets, sandwich shops, delis, health food stores, bagel shops, donut shops, pizzerias, buffet-style eateries, luncheonettes, etc. As a result, there are really no veg restaurants I particularly recommend.
But vegans can find enormous quantities of fresh vegan food discarded by supermarkets and health food stores throughout the city.
19. Do you ever crave fresh foods?
The image that freegans are martyrs consuming scraps and rotten items is completely a myth. In reality, most freegans find that they are able to eat much BETTER than they would as purchasers.
Most retailers vastly overproduce and overorder, to the point where on a daily basis they are throwing away enormous quantities of goods --often the day they are delivered to the store or created on the premises.
In some cases, chain supermarkets will throw out unopened cases of new products (eggs, salad mixes) because the shelves are already too full--meaning that freegans are actually getting fresher foods than the customers paying for the same items!
By and large the vegan community hasnt confronted the reality that in this culture, you need to be well off to eat well. Go to Food Emporium and pick up a package of organic spinach, and it will set you back $6. Go to Burger King and you can order off the dollar menu.
For many people, one of the primary motivations to recover discarded foods is access to enormous quantities of high quality foods-- organic produce, fresh organic, whole grain bread, gourmet prepared foods, etc. Someone who attended one of our tours recently commented that his motivation for joining us was that, "It's easier than shoplifting."
One of the best marketing schemes going is sell-by dates. Products are often dates LONG before there is any decline in quality, and this ensures that stores will keep throwing products away (which, as we've see constantly, they do) and consumers will do the same (which they also do--a recent study found that the average US family wastes $590 in useable food every year) and ordering and buying new commodities while they are still perfectly fine to use. Stores won't sell past the sell-by dates for concerns about image and liability, and consumers won't use goods past them for fear that they are unsafe, but this is really just another form of manipulation-- akin to the computer company telling us last years computer is obsolete or the fashion designer telling us our clothes are out of style.
Putting aside economic motive for a moment, we should remember that sell-by dates are designed to give us time to use the products, with the expectation that many of us keep our foods for a week or more before we use them. The idea is that if they are sold later than the sell- by date, we will have a more limited time span within which they are ideal to use than we might like. Some people think it's ok to use goods past the "sell-by" date, but will not use products psast date If they "best If used by dates," on the assumption that this is the last safe day to use such products. Yet, according to the University of Nebraska Center for Healthy Living, " The best if used by date tells you how long the product will retain its best flavor or quality. Its still safe to eat after the date, but it may have become stale or changed in taste or appearance.
But even if someone chose to only eat goods before their dates, this is easy on a freegan diet. Most stores throw away goods well before they even reach sell-by dates, because they toss the entire older shipment as soon as the new shipment of a product comes in.
Also bakeries, pizzerias, fish markets, rotisserie chicken sellers and lamb sellers (YUCK), donut shops, bagel shops, salad and sandwich shops, salad shops, restaurants, delis, and health food stores with buffets design their business to throw away EVERYTHING they don't sell as soon as the store closes for a given day. The goods freegans recover from these stores were on sale minutes earlier and are often still steaming hot (or cold and fresh in the case of cold foods), but these businesses aren't designed to refrigerate these goods overnight, or in some cases, they won't be as fresh by the next day (e.g. pizza and bagels, for example--you can certainly eat them day-old, but no one wants to go to a pizzeria to buy yesterday's reheated pizza). Of course, when freegans get to them, shortly after the stores have discarded them, they are still delicious and perfectly fresh.
19. When was the last time you paid for a meal?
I started recovering foods when I was 17, so up to that point, I was living off foods supplied by my parents. But I guess you could say that the bulk of my diet has been supplied with recovered foods for 11 years.
20. Are you concerned that exposing this unorthadox lifestyle will hurt the vegan movement because it makes it seem fringe and crazy?
Do vegans worry that publicizing veganism will hurt the movement for human rights in Latin America? Freeganism and veganism are two entirely different ideas. It's true that the word "freegan" is derived from "vegan" confuses many people on this point. The word freegan was chosen largely to satirize an attitude prevalent among many vegans who seem unconcerned about the social and ecological impacts of the goods they purchase-- so long as they are vegan.
Sweatshop made Nike shoes are fine-- as long as they aren't leather.
Chocolate soymilk is great, despite the destruction of rainforests, exploitation of child slaves in the African chocolate trade, destruction of rainforest and use of GMO plants In the production of soy, and massive energy consumption and waste of generated by the aseptic Tetrapaks that many soymilks are packaged within.
I once knew a vegan who bought a used SUV(!), with a leather steering wheel. Instead of either avoiding purchasing an SUV, insisting on one without leather parts, or accepting the leather wheel once she'd bought the car, her solution was to replace the leather steering wheel with a wooden one! Thus, to be "vegan," she contributed to the destruction of a tree-- animal habitat! Even continuing to use the leather wheel would have been a better option.
The term freegan was created to express the notion that to live the "cruelty-free" lifestyle that vegans advocate, we need to remove ourselves as much as possible from the capitalist economy, rather than taking the tunnel-vision perspective that we should only be concerned about animal flesh and secretions.
To many vegans, freeganism may seem marginal or extreme, but i think it's important to remember that veganism seems "normal" and "acceptable" from within the context of the vegan community. Yet many vegans fail to recognize that the organized vegan community reflects bourgeiouse white liberal cultural norms, and to people outside of this demographic eating tofu instead of hamburger can seem far weirder than getting good food that a store has needlessly thrown away.
As I mentioned earlier, in many neighborhoods, quality vegan foods simply aren't sold or are unavailable because of price, and for many people who grew up in cultures whose diet has come to center around meat, giving up the slab of flesh is simply unthinkable.
For those who want to eat vegan, freeganism provides a way to acquire high-quality vegan foods without paying the premium prices associated with them. And by encouraging people who don’t now and may never wish to be vegan to satisfy their dietary preferences through freeganism, those of us who wish to cause the demise of animal agriculture can steal consumer dollars from Tyson and Smithfield and Perdue.
If significant numbers of meat eaters start recovering rather than buying their meat, this, compounded with effective vegan advocacy, will make the sale of meat far less profitable. A significant drop in sales will leave stores ordering less, which will may at first lead to a costly product glut (which will probably be addressed by subsidies) and will result over time in less production. Adapting to producing for a smaller market will no doubt be expensive, and considering the economics of scale, will mean a far higher per-unit cost on each item. Subsidies will at first keep prices low, but a smaller, less profitable meat industry will over time lose influence with politicians, who may feel they have more to gain by championing tax cuts t than by providing welfare to a dying industry. At this point, meat prices will go even higher, and more consumers look for an alternative way to acquire their meat. Meanwhile, food experts are predicting increased production prices for food as petroleum (essential for transport, pesticides for feedcrops, powering machinery, etc) becomes increasingly scarce, with estimates that global petroleum supplied will peak and begin to decline within the next four years. This will make meat production even more costly, a cost that will be passed on consumers. Of course, less meat production will mean less meat discarded, but consumers who have grown accustomed to getting their food for free may not be so quick to go back to paying for food, particularly If we educate them on the benefits of a vegan diet. When I encoruage vegans to not be so quick to condemn freegans who eat meat, it's with this in mind- that encouraging people who already eat meat to get it from retail waste is a key component of ultimately destroying the meat industry.
One of the reasons that I feel
This may all seem far fetched, but in a world where scientists are genetically engineering heart-healthy pork, is it any more unrealistic than thinking the whole world is going to go vegan? Veganism, freeganism, and large-scale economic sabotage may very well be the combination attack that will ultimately destroy the meat industry.
But, Satya readers may wonder, why would people who don't chose to be vegan, WANT to adopt a freegan diet?
It’s important to remember that freeganism is a really all-encompassing response to a wasteful, profit driven culture. Even if people don't care at all about animal rights, but are concerned about things like labor exploitation in the products we buy, the ecological impacts of overconsumption and waste, the injustice of wasting resources while others basic needs aren't met, or just like the idea of getting stuff for free, freegan living is a really appealing notion.
And let’s be honestthere are lots of people who don’t like the idea of animal agriculture, but just can’t bring themselves to give up meat, dairy, etc. We can look down on them and call them murderers and weak-willed hypocrites, or we can try to meet them halfwaywhich, after all, is what we are doing by encouraging people to buy meat analogs, especially considering that those products were most likely taste tested against actual, purchased meat. If we tell current meat eaters who are sympathetic, but just can’t bring themselves to kick the meat habit, that there is a way that we they can continue consuming animal products without economically supporting factory farming, they just might go for it, especially with the predicted increases in food prices I mentioned earlier making getting food free an increasingly appealing option.
Within the last year, freeganism has generated a massive tide of mainstream media coverage. Much of it surprisingly respectful, some even laudatory. Literally hundreds of millions of people are learning about freeganism, and, thanks to sympathetic media coverage, seeing freegans as serious people championing an important cause, rather than as freaks rummaging in garbage. And because TV coverage has shown that the goods that we recover are of superb quality, people’s expectations of dirty and decaying food are being dispelled. Every time we hold trash tours, we see new faces, new people wanting to find ways to reduce their consumer impact. And these people run the gamut from vegan raw foodists to meat eaters. We embrace everyone, and teach them ways to consume without subsidizing corporations, regardless of what sorts of goods they prefer to harvest.
I think it's also important to remember that while foraging for food is the "kooky" practice that media has focused on, it's only one small component of the overall freegan lifestyle. People are certainly free to avoid this practice and embrace the many other aspects of freeganism. We find that over time, people who at first are wary of freegan food but are friends with freegans or participate in freegan community activities soon warm up to freegan eating.. They might accept an innocent-looking bagel, then eat a delicious meal prepared by a freegan, then nervously join a "trash tour" with a friend, see bags overflowing with pristine goods-- and vow to never buy food again. I'm sure many vegans know tofu-phobic meat who took a similar route to veganism.
21. What is the best kept freegan secret?
That all of this isn't just crazy idealism or foolish naïvete. We're the last to notice it in the United States, but people worldwide are questioning and challenging the neoliberal global economic model, rejecting US style global capitalism. For example, in just a handful of years, the political landscape In South America has been vastly transformed. In Brazil, Bolivia, and Venzuela have elected presidents who ostensibly challenge the neoliberal economic model and are supported by popular mass movements. Elected neoliberal dupes and corporate cronies have been driven out again and again by the angry and impatient massews of Argentina and Ecuador, demanding a better alternative.
But on a far more fundamental not only global capitalism, but industrial civilization over all, is entering its dying hours. It's now becoming increasingly clear that the end of the era of fossil fuels is approaching, as global supplies of petroleum, coal, and natural gas are depleted to the point where they are no longer viable commercial fuels, and no viable alternative appears available to take their place.
Oil production is expected to peak with the next four years, after which extraction efforts will see every diminishing supplies of oil. Within a few decades a petroleum powered economy will no longer be an option-- nor will a society built around petroleum products like plastics and pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
A shift towards a model where we live more simply, consume foods grown locally, discard a global economic model based on ever increasing consumption, share the resources we have rather than hording or wasting them, and work cooperatively rather than competitively to provide for our needs won't only be desireable, it will be our only viable option.
The question then, is whether this transformation will hit like an atomic blast, accompanied by famine and wars over scarce resources on an ecologically ravaged planet where or whether we will being the transition now. Will we leave future generations the apocalyptic legacy of global warming-- Katrina-like weather events are commonplace, massive disease epidemics spread coastlines and islands are submerged as glaciers and ice caps melt, and the already unprecendented rate of species and habitat loss increase further as delicate climactic conditions are destroyed.? Or will we recognize that it is the responsibility of our generation to avert these catastrophes with what little time we may have left?
Oh, and while it may seem a strange thing to say after such grim predictions, the other secret is that freegan living is really fun!
Freegan believe that we must build sustainable ways of living now--rather than simply petitioning the corporations to reform and asking the governments to reign in the corporations--neither will change until it’s already too late.
22. I collect furniture, books and other material stuff from street corners. But I stay away from the food. Am I considered a freegan?
The seminal essay "Why Freegan?" defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating; ", so by that definition, the answer would probably be "no." But even that essay includes a wide array of ways to "Extend the Ethic"-- things like carlessness, wild foraging, using a handkerchief, and carrying a reusable cup-- that you might find more palatable.
Freegan.info views freeganism as a philosophy, an approach to living, and a resistance strategy--- not as a set of lifestyle rules. We recognize the complexity of making ethical living choices, and work to provide people with ideas, information, and a local and global online community to empower and inform people about ways to live ethical and free lives. Our focus is far more on building a new and more sustainable culture from the ground up than it is on micromanaging the lifestyle choices of individuals. We focus on the positive and try to make it as easy as possible for people to make sustainable and ethical lifestyle choices that will also improve their quality of life. Many of us are turned off by the very negative "vegan police" approach of looking down on someone who owns a leather belt or hasn't yet given up ice cream, and feel that it's much easier to get people to WANT to make positive changes if we make them feel welcome as they are, rather than having to constantly worry if they will be judged for not being "freegan enough."
People with internet access can visit freegan.info for many practical tips on everything from squatting (http://freegan.info/?page=Squatting ) to urban foraging(http://freegan.info/?page=UrbanForaging). We also have an online directory of choice locations to visit for choice foraging finds (http://freegan.info/?page=LocalDirectories) and hold hold group trash tours every week and introductory workshops every month. (schedule online at http://freegan.info/?page=Events and a print version of the schedule can be provided on request by calling Janet at 347-724-6954). We pass our the print event schedules when we give away the goods we've amassed to outreach to new people, including homeless people, and encourage them to participate in our future activities. In Our Hearts Collective publishes a print "dumpster map"(inourhearts@gmail.com for details).
Wildman Steve Brill offers lots of useful info on foraging wild growing plants and mushrooms from urban parks at http://wildmanstevebrill.com/ ,in books like Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not-So-Wild) Places, and in his wild foraging tours of urban parks (schedule posted on the website).
Times Up holds bicycle repair workshops several times a week (http://www.times-up.org/bike_workshop.php)
1. Do you feel you are taking food away from folks who really need it, like the homeless or city rats?
The United States has an estimated 3 million homeless people, yet the estimated population of the United States is almost 300 million. According to a USDA-commissioned study, 40-50% of all food in the United States is wasted--96 billion pounds of food worth approximately $100 billion dollars! This means we waste enough food to feed every homeless person 100 times over! So scarcity is a non-issue--there's enough to go around. So scarcity of resources isn't the issue--inappropriate distribution is.
Freegans believe in going beyond charity, building mutually supportive communities to empower people to claim these resources for their own needs and for others. Our dinner events and trash tours include everyone from retired corporate executives to students to teachers to homeless people, foraging together, preparing food together, building affinity across class lines. While in no way blind to the differences in privilege between our respect situations, we are working to create a model where the needs of all are met irrespective of income--where we facilitate methods for people to feed, clothe, house, entertain, and transport themselves without employment or capital. Rather than tossing people crumbs to help them survive on the bottom rung of the capitalist economic ladder, we are working to liberate them of that system altogether.
In the process, we undermine this culture's traditional notions of success and failure, notions that leave many homeless people more willing to beg for quarters to buy inadequate food rather than "lowering themselves" to getting food discarded by stores. We've been convinced that being successful and productive in this culture means making lots of money to have the ability to buy lots of stuff. Acquiring second-hand or wasted goods is variously seen as embarrassing or tragic, particularly when we've been trained to believe that goods acquired anywhere other than on a retail store shelf are suspect. Yet when groups of diverse people turn rummage through retail trash into a festive, cooperative event, we effectively rewrite the script. Observers see a group of directed, organized people, too busy a great time recovering useable goods to feel ashamed or embarrassed.. Pity and contempt are replaced by curiosity, appreciation, and solidarity, something we've realize from countless conversations with passersby of all economic strata-- many of whom end up joining in!
One of the most vital challenges that projects like Freegan.info's trash tours face is developing strategies to make these projects accessible to more homeless people. Freegan.info does this in part by passing out flyers with our schedule of activities as we walk the streets of Manhattan, distributing the foods and other items we've collected to anyone who wants them. Even those who have no problem gathering goods on their own from retail refuse enjoy the added sense of community of the group endeavor. It's also important to remember that hunger in New York City isn't limited to the homeless-- according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger more than one in seven New Yorkers are live in a food insecure household-- where someone has gone hungry or faced the brink of hungersometimes chronicallywithin the last year. And many homeless people and low-income workers, have no concept of the enormous volume of useable goods discarded every day. For these people, participation in our tours can be the difference between hunger and access to an endless supply of fresh, healthy food and all manner of other useable goods.
Beyond providing a service to these people though, our goal is to empower people through engagement in mutual aid projects. We welcome people not only to come to our events to learn our information and insights, but to share theirs and to directly participate in gathering goods for our collective meals, our individual needs, and to give away to others.. We believe that people can feel a far greater sense of worth being part of a community where they have something to share along with something to receive, where they can feel that they are participating rather than being served, and where everyone benefits from participation, as opposed to having a divide between those providing service and those being served.
Having said this, we aren't blind to the reality that a disproportionate number of people who participate in our activities come from circumstances of relative privilege and that to some degree we reflect the disproportionate whiteness of anti-consumerist movements, though perhaps far less than many other projects with similar ideals. One of the goals we've discussed is making more of an effort to bring homeless people into the planning phases of our activities so that they can feel like fully enfranchised members of our community and so that we can organize our activities in ways that are more responsive to their needs and considerate of the unique realities and challenges they face. It's also important, in my opinion, that we do more to include low-income workers and non-Engish speaking people.
As for rats, I can honestly say that in years of foraging, I have never once seen a rat in a New York City trash bag. These bags are tossed outside stores generally around 9 PM and are collected by sanitation workers with 1-3 hours. Rats tend to make themselves scarce until far later at night than the time these bags are collected, so they never find their way into them, and in general tend to avoid such public places as the well-lit curb in front a supermarket storefront. In any case, if someday the rats decide they want a piece of the action, there's certainly more than enough to go around.
13. Be honest, have you ever gotten stuck in a dumpster?
No. I do very little actual climbing into dumpsters. In Manhattan, very few stores use dumpsters, but instead discard bags on the curb. Still, I've certainly climbed into dumpsters in suburbs and it's never been a problem. Pretty fun, actually.
14. Will you go to a restaurant on a date or would you take them dumpster diving?
Why has time for dating? I spend almost every day doing interviews like this!
15. What did you have for lunch today?
Coconut, mango, taro root, banana and okra.
16. Where do you usually go for breakfast?
My refrigerator. I restock my fridge about once a week during our group foraging expeditions. I constantly find far more than I can use at city supermarkets. In fact, I usually find so much that I gather all that I have the strength to carry, redistribute as much as I can to people I run into on the street on my way to the bus station, often giving way about 30 pounds of food, and STILL am left with a week's worth of food!
17. Describe a typical foraging expedition.
18. Which NYC Veg restaurants have the best garbage?
Prepare-to-order restaurants in NY, from my experience, waste far less food than other food businesses--bakeries, supermarkets, sandwich shops, delis, health food stores, bagel shops, donut shops, pizzerias, buffet-style eateries, luncheonettes, etc. As a result, there are really no veg restaurants I particularly recommend.
But vegans can find enormous quantities of fresh vegan food discarded by supermarkets and health food stores throughout the city.
19. Do you ever crave fresh foods?
The image that freegans are martyrs consuming scraps and rotten items is completely a myth. In reality, most freegans find that they are able to eat much BETTER than they would as purchasers.
Most retailers vastly overproduce and overorder, to the point where on a daily basis they are throwing away enormous quantities of goods --often the day they are delivered to the store or created on the premises.
In some cases, chain supermarkets will throw out unopened cases of new products (eggs, salad mixes) because the shelves are already too full--meaning that freegans are actually getting fresher foods than the customers paying for the same items!
By and large the vegan community hasnt confronted the reality that in this culture, you need to be well off to eat well. Go to Food Emporium and pick up a package of organic spinach, and it will set you back $6. Go to Burger King and you can order off the dollar menu.
For many people, one of the primary motivations to recover discarded foods is access to enormous quantities of high quality foods-- organic produce, fresh organic, whole grain bread, gourmet prepared foods, etc. Someone who attended one of our tours recently commented that his motivation for joining us was that, "It's easier than shoplifting."
One of the best marketing schemes going is sell-by dates. Products are often dates LONG before there is any decline in quality, and this ensures that stores will keep throwing products away (which, as we've see constantly, they do) and consumers will do the same (which they also do--a recent study found that the average US family wastes $590 in useable food every year) and ordering and buying new commodities while they are still perfectly fine to use. Stores won't sell past the sell-by dates for concerns about image and liability, and consumers won't use goods past them for fear that they are unsafe, but this is really just another form of manipulation-- akin to the computer company telling us last years computer is obsolete or the fashion designer telling us our clothes are out of style.
Putting aside economic motive for a moment, we should remember that sell-by dates are designed to give us time to use the products, with the expectation that many of us keep our foods for a week or more before we use them. The idea is that if they are sold later than the sell- by date, we will have a more limited time span within which they are ideal to use than we might like. Some people think it's ok to use goods past the "sell-by" date, but will not use products psast date If they "best If used by dates," on the assumption that this is the last safe day to use such products. Yet, according to the University of Nebraska Center for Healthy Living, " The best if used by date tells you how long the product will retain its best flavor or quality. Its still safe to eat after the date, but it may have become stale or changed in taste or appearance.
But even if someone chose to only eat goods before their dates, this is easy on a freegan diet. Most stores throw away goods well before they even reach sell-by dates, because they toss the entire older shipment as soon as the new shipment of a product comes in.
Also bakeries, pizzerias, fish markets, rotisserie chicken sellers and lamb sellers (YUCK), donut shops, bagel shops, salad and sandwich shops, salad shops, restaurants, delis, and health food stores with buffets design their business to throw away EVERYTHING they don't sell as soon as the store closes for a given day. The goods freegans recover from these stores were on sale minutes earlier and are often still steaming hot (or cold and fresh in the case of cold foods), but these businesses aren't designed to refrigerate these goods overnight, or in some cases, they won't be as fresh by the next day (e.g. pizza and bagels, for example--you can certainly eat them day-old, but no one wants to go to a pizzeria to buy yesterday's reheated pizza). Of course, when freegans get to them, shortly after the stores have discarded them, they are still delicious and perfectly fresh.
19. When was the last time you paid for a meal?
I started recovering foods when I was 17, so up to that point, I was living off foods supplied by my parents. But I guess you could say that the bulk of my diet has been supplied with recovered foods for 11 years.
20. Are you concerned that exposing this unorthadox lifestyle will hurt the vegan movement because it makes it seem fringe and crazy?
Do vegans worry that publicizing veganism will hurt the movement for human rights in Latin America? Freeganism and veganism are two entirely different ideas. It's true that the word "freegan" is derived from "vegan" confuses many people on this point. The word freegan was chosen largely to satirize an attitude prevalent among many vegans who seem unconcerned about the social and ecological impacts of the goods they purchase-- so long as they are vegan.
Sweatshop made Nike shoes are fine-- as long as they aren't leather.
Chocolate soymilk is great, despite the destruction of rainforests, exploitation of child slaves in the African chocolate trade, destruction of rainforest and use of GMO plants In the production of soy, and massive energy consumption and waste of generated by the aseptic Tetrapaks that many soymilks are packaged within.
I once knew a vegan who bought a used SUV(!), with a leather steering wheel. Instead of either avoiding purchasing an SUV, insisting on one without leather parts, or accepting the leather wheel once she'd bought the car, her solution was to replace the leather steering wheel with a wooden one! Thus, to be "vegan," she contributed to the destruction of a tree-- animal habitat! Even continuing to use the leather wheel would have been a better option.
The term freegan was created to express the notion that to live the "cruelty-free" lifestyle that vegans advocate, we need to remove ourselves as much as possible from the capitalist economy, rather than taking the tunnel-vision perspective that we should only be concerned about animal flesh and secretions.
To many vegans, freeganism may seem marginal or extreme, but i think it's important to remember that veganism seems "normal" and "acceptable" from within the context of the vegan community. Yet many vegans fail to recognize that the organized vegan community reflects bourgeiouse white liberal cultural norms, and to people outside of this demographic eating tofu instead of hamburger can seem far weirder than getting good food that a store has needlessly thrown away.
As I mentioned earlier, in many neighborhoods, quality vegan foods simply aren't sold or are unavailable because of price, and for many people who grew up in cultures whose diet has come to center around meat, giving up the slab of flesh is simply unthinkable.
For those who want to eat vegan, freeganism provides a way to acquire high-quality vegan foods without paying the premium prices associated with them. And by encouraging people who don’t now and may never wish to be vegan to satisfy their dietary preferences through freeganism, those of us who wish to cause the demise of animal agriculture can steal consumer dollars from Tyson and Smithfield and Perdue.
If significant numbers of meat eaters start recovering rather than buying their meat, this, compounded with effective vegan advocacy, will make the sale of meat far less profitable. A significant drop in sales will leave stores ordering less, which will may at first lead to a costly product glut (which will probably be addressed by subsidies) and will result over time in less production. Adapting to producing for a smaller market will no doubt be expensive, and considering the economics of scale, will mean a far higher per-unit cost on each item. Subsidies will at first keep prices low, but a smaller, less profitable meat industry will over time lose influence with politicians, who may feel they have more to gain by championing tax cuts t than by providing welfare to a dying industry. At this point, meat prices will go even higher, and more consumers look for an alternative way to acquire their meat. Meanwhile, food experts are predicting increased production prices for food as petroleum (essential for transport, pesticides for feedcrops, powering machinery, etc) becomes increasingly scarce, with estimates that global petroleum supplied will peak and begin to decline within the next four years. This will make meat production even more costly, a cost that will be passed on consumers. Of course, less meat production will mean less meat discarded, but consumers who have grown accustomed to getting their food for free may not be so quick to go back to paying for food, particularly If we educate them on the benefits of a vegan diet. When I encoruage vegans to not be so quick to condemn freegans who eat meat, it's with this in mind- that encouraging people who already eat meat to get it from retail waste is a key component of ultimately destroying the meat industry.
One of the reasons that I feel
This may all seem far fetched, but in a world where scientists are genetically engineering heart-healthy pork, is it any more unrealistic than thinking the whole world is going to go vegan? Veganism, freeganism, and large-scale economic sabotage may very well be the combination attack that will ultimately destroy the meat industry.
But, Satya readers may wonder, why would people who don't chose to be vegan, WANT to adopt a freegan diet?
It’s important to remember that freeganism is a really all-encompassing response to a wasteful, profit driven culture. Even if people don't care at all about animal rights, but are concerned about things like labor exploitation in the products we buy, the ecological impacts of overconsumption and waste, the injustice of wasting resources while others basic needs aren't met, or just like the idea of getting stuff for free, freegan living is a really appealing notion.
And let’s be honestthere are lots of people who don’t like the idea of animal agriculture, but just can’t bring themselves to give up meat, dairy, etc. We can look down on them and call them murderers and weak-willed hypocrites, or we can try to meet them halfwaywhich, after all, is what we are doing by encouraging people to buy meat analogs, especially considering that those products were most likely taste tested against actual, purchased meat. If we tell current meat eaters who are sympathetic, but just can’t bring themselves to kick the meat habit, that there is a way that we they can continue consuming animal products without economically supporting factory farming, they just might go for it, especially with the predicted increases in food prices I mentioned earlier making getting food free an increasingly appealing option.
Within the last year, freeganism has generated a massive tide of mainstream media coverage. Much of it surprisingly respectful, some even laudatory. Literally hundreds of millions of people are learning about freeganism, and, thanks to sympathetic media coverage, seeing freegans as serious people championing an important cause, rather than as freaks rummaging in garbage. And because TV coverage has shown that the goods that we recover are of superb quality, people’s expectations of dirty and decaying food are being dispelled. Every time we hold trash tours, we see new faces, new people wanting to find ways to reduce their consumer impact. And these people run the gamut from vegan raw foodists to meat eaters. We embrace everyone, and teach them ways to consume without subsidizing corporations, regardless of what sorts of goods they prefer to harvest.
I think it's also important to remember that while foraging for food is the "kooky" practice that media has focused on, it's only one small component of the overall freegan lifestyle. People are certainly free to avoid this practice and embrace the many other aspects of freeganism. We find that over time, people who at first are wary of freegan food but are friends with freegans or participate in freegan community activities soon warm up to freegan eating.. They might accept an innocent-looking bagel, then eat a delicious meal prepared by a freegan, then nervously join a "trash tour" with a friend, see bags overflowing with pristine goods-- and vow to never buy food again. I'm sure many vegans know tofu-phobic meat who took a similar route to veganism.
21. What is the best kept freegan secret?
That all of this isn't just crazy idealism or foolish naïvete. We're the last to notice it in the United States, but people worldwide are questioning and challenging the neoliberal global economic model, rejecting US style global capitalism. For example, in just a handful of years, the political landscape In South America has been vastly transformed. In Brazil, Bolivia, and Venzuela have elected presidents who ostensibly challenge the neoliberal economic model and are supported by popular mass movements. Elected neoliberal dupes and corporate cronies have been driven out again and again by the angry and impatient massews of Argentina and Ecuador, demanding a better alternative.
But on a far more fundamental not only global capitalism, but industrial civilization over all, is entering its dying hours. It's now becoming increasingly clear that the end of the era of fossil fuels is approaching, as global supplies of petroleum, coal, and natural gas are depleted to the point where they are no longer viable commercial fuels, and no viable alternative appears available to take their place.
Oil production is expected to peak with the next four years, after which extraction efforts will see every diminishing supplies of oil. Within a few decades a petroleum powered economy will no longer be an option-- nor will a society built around petroleum products like plastics and pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
A shift towards a model where we live more simply, consume foods grown locally, discard a global economic model based on ever increasing consumption, share the resources we have rather than hording or wasting them, and work cooperatively rather than competitively to provide for our needs won't only be desireable, it will be our only viable option.
The question then, is whether this transformation will hit like an atomic blast, accompanied by famine and wars over scarce resources on an ecologically ravaged planet where or whether we will being the transition now. Will we leave future generations the apocalyptic legacy of global warming-- Katrina-like weather events are commonplace, massive disease epidemics spread coastlines and islands are submerged as glaciers and ice caps melt, and the already unprecendented rate of species and habitat loss increase further as delicate climactic conditions are destroyed.? Or will we recognize that it is the responsibility of our generation to avert these catastrophes with what little time we may have left?
Oh, and while it may seem a strange thing to say after such grim predictions, the other secret is that freegan living is really fun!
Freegan believe that we must build sustainable ways of living now--rather than simply petitioning the corporations to reform and asking the governments to reign in the corporations--neither will change until it’s already too late.
22. I collect furniture, books and other material stuff from street corners. But I stay away from the food. Am I considered a freegan?
The seminal essay "Why Freegan?" defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating; ", so by that definition, the answer would probably be "no." But even that essay includes a wide array of ways to "Extend the Ethic"-- things like carlessness, wild foraging, using a handkerchief, and carrying a reusable cup-- that you might find more palatable.
Freegan.info views freeganism as a philosophy, an approach to living, and a resistance strategy--- not as a set of lifestyle rules. We recognize the complexity of making ethical living choices, and work to provide people with ideas, information, and a local and global online community to empower and inform people about ways to live ethical and free lives. Our focus is far more on building a new and more sustainable culture from the ground up than it is on micromanaging the lifestyle choices of individuals. We focus on the positive and try to make it as easy as possible for people to make sustainable and ethical lifestyle choices that will also improve their quality of life. Many of us are turned off by the very negative "vegan police" approach of looking down on someone who owns a leather belt or hasn't yet given up ice cream, and feel that it's much easier to get people to WANT to make positive changes if we make them feel welcome as they are, rather than having to constantly worry if they will be judged for not being "freegan enough."