Photo: Carolyn Cole / LA Times
The Los Angeles Times has a neat article spotlighting "freegans," a growing subculture that promotes opting out of capitalism in any way you can, cutting spending habits, and living off consumer waste by dumpster diving for food.
For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery store.
Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at four-star restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent. [...]
Nelson, 51, once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble. Tired of representing a multimillion dollar company, she quit in 2005 and became a "freegan" -- the word combining "vegan" and "free" -- a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste. Though many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they believe waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices.
--TwoDragons
You want to save the world? Go buy as much made in ____ crap you can, as often as you can.
mmmm you going to eat that?
It's not something I would be able to do, but I don't think it's as unsanitary as one might initially assume.
The funny thing is that they rely on the very thing they rail against.
So yes there is a need to reduce waste to help the environment, but we can't all go to their extreme without destroying our way of life (and ushering in untold amount of suffering and death)
This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard of.
Well, I just hope she's in the same retirement plan that I am into, because by rumaging through garbage she'll die pretty soon from a nasty disease or an old dirty needle.
More capitalist retirement money for me.
No seriously, as Capt. Obvious and others stated: She is still depending on the capitalist distribution system, just not supporting it. So in that logic, once the system fails because of noone supporting it, she would die of starvation because she didn't make any long term sustainable food system for herself.
I'm a firm believer that there is a very simple, and very easy way to conserve and preserve the planet.
Just don't have kids. Its amazingly simple.
Think of all the waste one person creates in their lifetime. Just by NOT having that kid you've eliminated one lifetime of waste and consumption by 100%.
I always lol at conservationists that have like 2-3 kids. hypocrites.
Having once worked in a kitchen, during college, I cannot imagine that it is sanitary to pick through this stuff. Along with waste food, and stuff we felt had become barely edible, we also threw away dead rats, drain gleanings, vomit soaked rags... the list just goes on.
These freegans, I believe, have a mental illness.
The amount of food thrown away each day is appalling, so rather than prove a point that this "waste" can feed many, the freegans should go in and buy what is about to be thrown out?
I am about to knock 50% off the cost of a car, do you A Run in and buy one before the reduction or wait patiently for a fat saving?
Capitalism is amoral, the only reflex it has is to feed the share holders, who are like baby birds, blind, voracious and indiscriminant.
Also as for the hygiene aspect, most everything in the world is edible if properly cleaned.
Potato grows in dirt, the dirt is fertilised with shit.
The best tomato I ever tasted grew in a friend of mine's own shit.
Literally he ate a tomato,took a shit in his outhouse toilet, moved the toilet next week and in the summer the plot was teeming with the best Toms I have evr tasted.
Where the f*ck did you think vegetables come from?
I'm Scottish so it struck me as funny.
If you want to live free of the capitalist machine you need to provide for yourself and barter/trade/labour exchange with others to provide the rest. That simple. And she evidently has the funds to do it.
But they don't need to go around haughtily annointing themselves anti capitalists and other nonsensical self aggrandizing terms, to make themselves feel superior to others. It's like dishwashers calling themselves supply chain management assisters. Know what I'm saying?
They are dumpster divers, no more and no less. No need for fluff.
Alex, Alex, Alex, you used to be cool man. You've changed...
Also, capitalism is not amoral. Tossing aside the fact that what'moral' means can be disputed, capitalism isn't amoral in itself, but it *is* being practiced amorally.
Sorry, but I like the idea that if I work more (or better / smarter / etc), that i can have more of a 'reward' than the person who does not.
After all, if a farmer plants no crops, does he expect food to grow anyhow?
It a law of nature, directly porportional.
Effort = getting stuff.
It has "no moral", it's just optimisation under constraints. That's why it's the best system (best in the sense it's winning over other ones)
Our 'job' is to put constraints (ethics, redistribution of wealth, etc.) and to find a good balance between those contraints and the wealth production, i.e. not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The level of balance-desire changes with our beliefs (Republican vs Democrats...), as long as ideology does not blind the system users (communism, some religions, etc.).
I think freegans miss the point. Like said in many posts, the only way to opt out of capitalism is to create a community that will not adopt those rules, not parasiting the system they aborh.
Honestly from Shakers, and cummunalism-like societies in New Emgland and elsewhere, to so called communists regimes or religion based governments, I've never seen opting out of capitalism working on the long run.
(Hey, how do you find the land first?)
Some people must fell like being drawn towards the dark side of the force ("He will join us or die, my master."), but it's just a question of balance, not becoming extremists.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Nora….Without having children…the worlds population would eventually become non-existent…fool
OMG we're going to go extinct!
Uhm...Ever hear of overpopulation? By choosing to not have kids you're reducing a problem. I seriously doubt everyone on the planet would follow suit.
good bit!
Capitalism is Amoral, you people seem to not be able to read a friggin dictionary.
moral
of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.
immoral
violating moral principles; not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics
amoral
having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong: a completely amoral person
Capitalism is AMORAL, and to cap it all it is applied and policed by the immoral.
Also how does growing even more food in a culture where we bin enough to feed everyone to popping amke anything better or high light the waste?
Doens't this just mean MORE STUFF BEING GROWN WHEN WE ALREADY HAVE MORE THAN WE NEEED.
Good god you US Americans are a greedy avariscious lot.
On another note, if you think this is just about growing more or less food, you are *quite* missing the point.
Think of all the waste one person creates in their lifetime. Just by NOT having that kid you’ve eliminated one lifetime of waste and consumption by 100%.
I always lol at conservationists that have like 2-3 kids. hypocrites.
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What a bass-akwards view. Children are producers, not consumers. Children today will popularize non-fossil fuel vehicles 40 years from now. They will develop ways to clean up plastics and the pollution we created. By not raising a child to do that YOU'RE the one creating more garbage.
Uhm…Ever hear of overpopulation?
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there is no overpopulation of the Earth, look it up.
The following link takes you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?" which was published by the
Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold