Freegans and Other Freaks

Many of the packaged salad bags were bloated and covered in a brown, sticky liquid, but we decided to keep their non-swollen counterparts, which appeared fresh enough. Then a flash erupted from a nearby camera. The video photographer bothered me when he perched himself on top of a dumpster and filmed us from above, but the flash was different, and worse. Every 15 seconds our collection of trash bags was illuminated, reminding me that I was being documented dumpster-diving for food.

I used to hit the dumpster-diving circuit several times a week in Ohio, but I'd lived in New York for more than six months before I did it here. Experience had taught me never to bother with a trash bag that contains loose coffee grounds and to leave any package or bottle that is noticeably bloated; also that if you find a carton of eggs, exactly one, and only one, will be cracked. Ohio had not, however, prepared me to be transformed from a sneaky trash thief into an amateur star in an NYU student exploitation production.

A few years ago, a broken wrist sidelined me from BMX and I decided to give activism a try. Soon I discovered that these groups are usually counterproductive, because of their pedantic tendencies. When a flyer from the October Critical Mass after-party alerted me to a group meeting of freegans and a dumpster-diving tour afterwards, though, I decided to give it a try. Touring dumpsters filled with vast amounts of perfectly good food makes even more sense here in New York than it did in Ohio, with rent being three times as high. The flyer was odd, though, in mentioning that the tour was open to the media.

Coming from Ohio, this made no sense. The best Ohio trash is found in the suburbs, well protected in the alleyways behind businesses. If a shopkeeper finds that dumpster-divers are frequenting his store, locks are added to the dumpsters and cops are called. Keeping a jackpot dumpster diveable means taking every possible precaution: only diving late at night when the store is closed, hiding under trash if an employee or police officer comes out, even using walkie-talkies to signal a getaway driver to come pick you up.

Why, then, would the New York group tolerate the media tagging along?

The freegan meeting went as expected, though I learned that New York's definition of freeganism varies from Ohio's. In the Midwest, a freegan is someone who won't pay for anything made from animal products but will use these products if they are discarded, the reasoning being that they may as well not go to waste. In New York, a freegan is anyone who tries to live for free. New York freegans include squatters, guerilla gardeners, dumpster-divers and other assorted anti-capitalists. Unfortunately, New York freegans are following the trend in activism of trying to take on everything at once, thus limiting their effectiveness. I wanted to give the freegans the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to see how much success a group of eight people can have when a two-hour meeting barely addresses half the items on the agenda-though this may have been because half the attendees arrived late.

Curbing the enormous amount of waste in our society is a noble cause, but meetings worthy of the People's Front of Judea accomplish little.

After the two-hour meeting, we departed for the first dumpster, where the film crew was waiting for us. I've never felt so dirty dumpster-diving, and this despite the incredible score that netted 50 cans of Progressive Soup ($2.99 apiece in the store), plenty of produce, bagels and even a nice assortment of junk food. My fellow dumpster-divers were professionals, allowing little excess garbage to spill on to the sidewalk, sharing food and knowing exactly where to go. The problem was the painful lack of discretion. I never imagined diving in such a large group while being followed by a film crew on a busy street in plain sight of midtown residents. The NYU students were nice, but lived up to their school's reputation for attracting the sheltered, spoiled and naive. How many dumpster-diving films have already been made?

There's much to be said, though, for New York dumpstering. As inefficient as their meeting was, the New York freegans were organized. In Ohio, dumpster-divers often show up at a dumpster only to find it already plundered by friends. Furthermore, the New York freegans have a map of notable hotspots on their website; Ohioans have always been against such a map for fear of an irresponsible person ruining the dumpster for everyone. And we even benefited from friendly store employees who, instead of telling us to leave and threatening to have us arrested, told us where else to find good trash.

The most impressive achievement of the New York freegans, though, was their education of the bewildered folk who noticed what we were doing. Often these passersby took home a sample of our bountiful supply. Ohio divers have absolutely no outreach, and this is a shame. There is plenty of perfectly good, free food to be found in the trash.