Freegans-the Ultimate Recyclers

▪ 2009

by Mary Grigsby

      In 2008 widespread media attention gave the little-known freegan (free + vegan) movement greater visibility in mainstream culture. Freegans—most of whom lived in cities in relatively affluent countries—believed that global capitalism created a consumerist lifestyle that encouraged and was dependent on conspicuous consumption and waste, was unstable and unsustainable, and was destructive to the environment and to human and animal well-being. The movement advocated dropping out of the economy, for example, by avoiding paid work, by not buying food or consumer goods, and by conserving resources. Freeganism overlapped to some extent with other movements, including the environmental, social-justice, antiglobalization, anarchist, animal rights, and simple-living movements.

      The term is believed to have been first used in 1995 by Keith McHenry, one of the founders of the organization Food Not Bombs. McHenry reported that as he and some colleagues walked by a Dumpster, he noticed that a large piece of cheese had been thrown out. He said, “Let's be freegan,” and suggested taking the cheese to eat. Food Not Bombs (www.foodnotbombs.net), which established chapters around the world, was founded on the belief that feeding the hungry should be a global priority ahead of military spending. Local chapters prepared donated or found vegetarian food to share with anyone; they also participated in disaster relief by providing meals. Although Food Not Bombs focused on the destructive effects of militarism, in 2008 McHenry in an interview confirmed that freeganism was very compatible with his group's ideas.

      Many freegans considered their manifesto to be an essay from 1999 titled “Why Freegan?: An Attack on Consumption, in Defense of Donuts.” It has been posted, usually anonymously, on numerous Web discussions of freegan principles. In an interview in 2008, Warren Oakes, the drummer in the punk rock band Against Me!, described having written the piece while he was working as an activist among youth in Venice, Fla. The essay, signed “Koala,” Oakes's nickname at the time, touched on the values, beliefs, and practices of freeganism. The values derived in part from an anarchist ideology that advocated finding ways to live outside the capitalist system, including the avoidance of work for wages. Other expressed goals included care for the environment and social justice. Practices advocated in the document included Dumpster diving, getting donations from stores or qualifying for food stamps, table diving (i.e., eating off plates left behind on restaurant tables), wild foraging, gardening, bartering, returning goods found in the trash to stores for cash refunds, eating at restaurants but paying only a gratuity, avoiding individual car ownership, bicycling, and living in abandoned buildings (squatting).

      Some freegans, as the term suggests, were vegans, people who avoid eating and using animal products. Other freegans used discarded or donated animal products. Some (“meagans”) also ate meat, if it had been thrown out. Philosphically, freeganism differed from veganism, however. Vegans sought to protect animals from exploitation, but they might otherwise participate in the prevailing economy. Freegans were especially critical of those vegans who consumed products developed for the vegan market. The freegans instead confronted the exploitation of workers, environmental destruction, and the alienation produced by the work-and-spend cycle promoted by current economic and cultural structures.

      The ideas and practices adopted by freegans were available in the broader culture, but freegans used them in distinctive ways. Media reports often focused on freegan Dumpster diving—which freegans prefer to call by other names, such as urban foraging or gleaning—as an arresting image and intriguing practice. Less often reported was the principle of obtaining food and goods for no money as a statement of opposition to the capitalist economy and its allied waste. Other avenues for retrieving and offering food and useful items included “freecycling” (the act of offering items to others, usually via certain Web sites), free stores, and free-exchange venues; freegans pointed to these as collective alternatives to the market economy. Rather than pay for housing, some freegans took up residence in abandoned buildings, reasoning that squatting resisted capitalism through subverting the private ownership of property. Some freegans also advocated planting gardens in abandoned lots (“guerrilla gardening”) or participating in community gardens to collectively grow vegetables and fruit and provide green space in urban settings.

      The freegan movement was very loosely structured. Freegans used the Internet extensively for networking, sharing information, and organizing. Examples of freegan Web sites include New York-based Freegan.info (www.freegan.info), UK Freegans (www.freegan.org.uk), and the Australian-originated Live4Free (www.live4free.org) Web site and blog. Numerous YouTube clips showed freegans in action; among the clips were videos taken on Dumpster-diving outings, giving tips for the novice, and showing the preparation of food obtained from the trash.

      Freegans have run into roadblocks and dangers. Squatting, for example, was illegal nearly everywhere, and people who lived in abandoned housing could be forced to move at any time. Gardening on vacant property was also a tenuous proposition, subject to actions by property owners. Even Dumpster diving was not without its dangers, and many cities passed laws against the practice. (Such laws might be justified as protection from identity theft or trespassing.) Hostile retailers poured bleach on discarded food; friendlier business owners, however, put goods carefully in the trash so that they might be recovered.

      Movement participants adopted lifestyles that to one degree or another involved getting things for free instead of buying them and bartering and sharing goods and services outside the market economy. Critics charged that the freegan lifestyle was in fact dependent on the capitalist system that it claimed to want to undermine, since participants relied on the system's waste. In response, freegans noted that they would welcome less waste. Meanwhile, they were glad to bring attention to the excesses of the culture.

Mary Grigsby is Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri at Columbia and the author of Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement.

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