Just curious if anyone is practicing freeganism and if they find the lifestyle sustainable?
Just took a quick look at the website. Among the practices described are using soup kitchens and food banks, shoplifting and employee theft. Parasitic, to say the least.
Well… that was different.
The contradictions in that website made my brain assplode. :rolleyes:
But you see it’s brilliant, because . . . no, I can’t continue that sentence.
I wonder if they ever ask themselves what would happen if everyone followed this creed. Nobody would be throwing anything away or giving anything away, there would be no employers or stores to steal from. I guess that means everyone would be doing subsistence farming. Wouldn’t that be special.
But they wouldn’t be wage slaves! :rolleyes:
Roddy
Then we’d have a world without wasted food 
And no one using that line about starving kids in Africa…
Huh, and just when I was about to decide that people on the far left were saner than those on the far right. Apparently I’ll have to settle for “less violent than those on the far right.”
Wild foraging (not stealing from your neighbor’s orchard) and gardening, though … that I can support. Just yesterday I saw a pumpkin sprouting from the jack-o-lantern innards that went into the compost heap, and lovingly transplanted it into its own little raised soil bed.
Please tell me this doesn’t make me as crazy as a freegan.
I know some college students who call themselves Freegans. Mostly, they seem to go dumpster-diving and eat the unfinished food off of other people’s plates in the cafeteria so that it doesn’t get thrown away. I think it’s kind of gross, but not harmful. However, I can’t see the system working so well if you don’t live on a college campus with a cafeteria and an abundance of well-off students who throw away perfectly good food.
Doesn’t sound too different from a hippie commune; maybe I’ll look into signing up.
Dumpster dive adult diapers? Do they ever get thrown out whole? Or is this suggesting what I think (fear) it’s suggesting?
Working at a very liberal college, I can absolutely assure you that the far left is just as full of whackaloons. However, they tend to be too disorganized and/or high to get their shit together.
Not crazy. Thrifty…prudent…our Depression-era grandmas would be proud.
See, I’d do that just because the little pumpking vine was trying to live, and I have to support that, unless it’s a noxious plant/harmful insect. I would have planted some pumpkin seeds, but…well, I toasted and ate 'em. They were delicious.
I do know someone who called himself a “freegan,” but it wasn’t like the article describes. He was a vegan, but if someone was offering free food (like at a banquet or party), he’d eat whatever was served.
Yeah, I’ve never seen a more perfect example of why Communism just does not work in reality. You can’t force everyone to be equal when some people are just too lazy to accomplish anything in the first place. I’ll be saving that website to show all my bleeding heart/hippie type pals. 
(None of whom are freegans, of course. I couldn’t deal with hanging near someone who dumpster dives, doesn’t flush their toilet, then doesn’t even shower.)
I really question the validity of some (okay, most) of their assertions. For example, I would be astounded to find that Ghandi drank his own urine unless he was in the direst of situations. Given where he was from and the stigma associated with uncleanliness there, it seems virtuall impossible that he would have done something like that.
That was the same thing that I thought about when I looked at the website. Many years ago I lived in a commune who would have described themselves that way. They were utterly full of shit. They had no problem spending OPM (like mine) as long as they didn’t have to work for it themselves. They decried any interaction with ‘the beast’ but happily accepted welfare checks and food stamps. Ripping off businesses was OK by them too. Their children were uneducated and barely supervised. I’m not saying that all communes were like that but this one sure was. I only lasted a few months before leaving in utter disgust.
This is what freegan means to me and my group of friends. Most of them make food that is vegan for themselves, but won’t refuse non-vegan food if it is offered to them elsewhere (to different degrees - may not drink a glass of milk and still usually always maintain vegetarianism). There is also an element of dumpster-diving to get food from grocery stores that throw away a lot of decent stuff. If it’s bread or something, they’ll take it even if it’s not vegan. Still won’t take dumped meat, though. Many stores have gotten to the point where they’ll just give away their food at the end of the day to the local Food Not Bombs, which takes it and makes mostly vegan meals to give out in the community to anyone who wants it.
Also, since the local restaurant kitchen scene is mostly run by these types of kids, a lot of late night restaurants will let you come in and take what other people don’t eat. The only two places where I knew of this actively happening, I knew almost the entire staff and so did everyone else. I wouldn’t really walk into a fancy restaurant and ask to do this.
This also applies to rescuing other things, like clothes and whatnot, out of dumpsters. There is a big vein of self-sufficiency - they have their own gardens, make their own bikes out of scrap, make their own clothes, etc.
Is it sustainable? Maybe, but I’d say it really depends. I live in a very liberal college town, so it might be more allowable here. Most of the freegan kids I knew were either high-schoolers or early twenty somethings. It’s closely tied to the punk lifestyle, and like as most punks mature and move on even if they’re still highly socially aware, I’d assume most freegans would, too.
Check out the French documentary “The Gleaners and I.”
Yowza. It’s only sustainable for a tiny fraction the population, or until we bomb ourselves by to the pre-inudstrial era and have to forage for everything anyway.
That’s the most hilariously revolting “advice” I’ve ever read. Can’t be serious.