Why Middle-Class Americans Are Dumpster Diving

[CoffeeCat]

I appreciate how clever these people are. It appears that many people who are living
in poverty, are dumpster diving for food, but the article mentions how people with good-
paying jobs are doing this too. Americans are being squeezed. I know when I leave the
grocery store, I practically have a panic attack. Food prices have increased so much,
and we hear NOTHING about this. People are literally--fed up and dumpster diving to offset
the exhorbitant cost of food--especially healthy food. And it--is a shame that so much is
thrown away.

From the article: http://www.investinganswers.com/a/why-middle-class-americans-are-turning-dumpster-diving-3543?utm_source=onewsj&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ia-os-0711
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Have you ever thought about getting your food out of a trash can?

Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America. In fact, dumpster divers even have a trendy new name -- "freegans" -- and as the economy crumbles their numbers are multiplying.

(snip)

During the recent economic downturn, the popularity of dumpster diving has exploded. Today, there are dumpster diving meetup groups, dumpster diving Facebook groups, and even entire organizations such as Food Not Bombs that openly encourage their members to go dumpster diving.

If your family was going hungry, would you go dumpster diving?

You might be surprised at who is doing it. Dumpster diving is not just for the homeless and the unemployed anymore. A lot of people that have decent jobs have picked up on the trend.

[Harmony Blue]

1. Most times super markets call the police

because they don't want to deal with a potential law suit if one is injured. But dumpster diving when employees are gone is very common, just don't do it in the middle of the day.

[KansDem]

2. Some supermarkets have been known to pour bleach in their dumpters...

...to stave off "divers"

[KansDem]

3. Here's another article

The Golden Dumpster: Inside Bend’s freegan movement

“In the course of a week, I’ve found whole pizzas, wrapped sandwiches, bags of onions, garlic, shallots, salad mix, boxes of donuts and cookies and all kinds of vegetables,” says a 20-something Bend resident who is also an on-and-off dumpster diver. He tells me his name is Mr. Nobody, and doesn’t want his identity known because in many instances, dumpster diving equates to trespassing.

“I mainly only dumpster dive when I’m going through a poor stretch in my life,” he says.

According to the website Freegan.info, dumpster diving is an off-shoot of Freeganism, a philosophy whose followers, “employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.” A study by the Urban Institute found that before the age of 65, more than half the U.S. population will have experienced poverty, which may explain why dumpster diving has become more than just a semi-accepted way to distribute and consume discarded, yet still edible, food. It’s a political movement.

While Mr. Nobody does not identify with the politics of Freeganism, another twenty-something who goes by the name Free-Range Vegan regularly supplements his vegan diet with day-old bread abandoned in downtown Bend dumpsters and embraces the Freegan tenets.

http://www.tsweekly.com/culture/features/the-golden-dumpster-inside-bends-freegan-movement.html

It's also been described as a "anti-consumerism movement."

[hedgehog]

4. My living room features a futon frame that my daughter retrieved

from the curb a few years back.

[Warpy]

6. I keep a floor lamp I picked out of the trash in Boston

to remind me of how far I've come.

I furnished several apartments in Boston completely out of castoffs I repaired, rewired, painted, patched, or whatever.

Now I'm living in a place furnished mostly with thrift store finds, a relative lap of luxury.

[eridani]

9. No place quite like Boston in June. Students leave, and often

--their stuff winds up all over the sidewalk. Got our first and only TV that way. These days, any TV watching I do is over the internet, or DVD sets.

[Warpy]

14. Most of the good stuff hits the sidewalk in August

after the students have run out on what's left of the lease. One of my temp jobs was cleaning and painting student apartments.

The abandoned porn stashes were some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen.

[ixion]

5. At one point in my life, I was reduced to dumpster diving

You can actually eat pretty well if you know where to look, but you're treated as scum by the rest of society.

[LongTomH]

7. Kim Stanley Robinson dealt withthe freegan subculture

.......in his Science in the Capital trilogy: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting. His main themes were abrupt climate change, and the resulting political fallout as well as a scientists as citizens theme that he's used in other stories.

The Science in the Capital series also has a strong social justice theme running throughout all three novels; Robinson demonstrates how the issue of inequality affects the issue of developing a sustainable culture.

[tama]

8. Freeganist pride

the amount of good food wasted by supermarket consumerism and capitalistic profit making is criminally insane and immoral. Go freeganism and gift economy! :)

[Skidmore]

10. About 2/3 of the stuff in my house is rehabbed

dumpster treasures, including the 40" LCD television some one tossed out because it wouldn't turn on. My husband brought it in and set to work repairing it. It cost $3 to buy the capacitor required to fix it. We have bookshelves, end tables, recliners, stereo equipment house plants and associate pottery, computer parts and a printer, plenty of plastic storage containers. lamps, and on and on. What we have not had to pay for in terms of goods, we have saved. All of this stuff was in good to excellent condition and quite often needed a minor repair. I don't buy stuff much. I buy groceries and replace bedding now and then. Sometimes I'll buy a few bits of used clothing to wear for gardening and around the house for cleaning.

We live fairly frugally and don't believe in wasting stuff. The only major purchase we made this year was a truck to replace the one that was totalled by an uninsured careless drive (his fault). First time we've had payments on a vehicle in 15 years. UGH.

Right now, we purchase any food we don't grow. We don't have need to dumpster dive for food as yet.

[qb]

11. I work full time, but I buy my groceries at a food shelf discount program,

and get most of my clothing 2nd-hand.
I'm not above dumpster-diving - I got some perfectly good moving boxes out of a dumpster.

[Zorra]

12. I taught my kids the craft of dumpster diving years ago.

Not because we needed the food or items that we would find.

It was because of what is going on in today's world.

[CoffeeCat]

13. It is very cool to read these stories...

There are many smart, frugal DUers. Why am I not surprised.

I imagine that I would have a lot of fun dumpster diving. I'm
a couponer and I love getting free things that way. This sounds
like a way to really knock off some dollars off of the grocery
budget. Especially when it comes to fruits and veggies--which
are outrageously expensive right now.

If I could find Honey Crisp apples in a dumpster...count me in! :)

[Name removed]

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[Shandris]

16. Sounds like hipster bullshit to me.

Now anyone who points out what they were -forced- to do to survive can be matched up by some smarmy middle-classer going 'Oh yeah, me too man!' while they sip their Pabst Blue Ribbon ironically.

I'll bet these Freegans aren't diving the kinds of dumpsters many of us were driven to. "You might be surprised who's doing it!" What is it, a fucking convention? There's nothing to be proud of in diving through the discarded fragments of a dysfunctional society just to fucking eat.

I dunno, maybe I'm just bitter about it. If I saw someone with a 'decent job' doing it, my head might just explode on the spot. If you have a 'decent job', then you're certainly making 3 times as much as me MINIMUM, and I can still buy fucking groceries. Barely, but whatever.

Edit: I'll note it's still somewhat early for me, and I only read the piece quoted. I reserve the right to reconsider later. :) But that's my initial reaction.