Heard of Freegans? Today’s article in the NYT is actually a fairly nuanced look at the ‘movement’, if one can call it that. I applaud the freegans’ atttempts to reduce their impact on the natural world, save the trees and animals, etc. But I wonder if their energies might be better directed — or directed additionally — towards effecting change both in their local communities and abroad. Simply consuming less here in the US is a great thing, but we also need to consider how we might harness our good fortunes and ample gifts in giving something back, not just taking/buying/consuming less. True, one of the women profiled is doing paralegal work for folks arrested during activist-related activities, and it seems almost all freegans lean pretty far to the left, and many engage in political and social activism. So perhaps I should take back much of what I write.
Yet I think the idea that a significant number of people will become freegan (who aren’t already or will have to become freegan by necessity) is fanciful. Most human beings will never willingly look to the trash for their first source of food when they have income to buy food at the market. We don’t go hunting for scraps in the compost heap — we let it decompose and use the compost to grow more fresh food. Similarly, the dream that someday all human will become vegetarians or vegans (or stop driving or flying en masse on their own) is no more than magical thinking. We have evolved to be omnivores, and there is not a single indigenous culture on the planet that was willingly and sustainably vegetarian or vegan. Why do some imagine that we need to transcend our animality?
But — back to other thing Freegans can do with their energy and passion: I think of the brilliant entrepreneur who started Terracycle — a company that uses worms to create liquid plant food out of waste and is bottled in used (not recycled) plastic soda bottles (even at Home Depot, the bottles are different on the shelves). The coolest part is that they are doing extremely well in the market. Yes, the product needs to be shipped around using fossil (or bio-) fuels, people need to earn dollars to pay for the product, and the company needs energy to run its machines. But — all that said — if more freegans thought about creating companies that reuse waste even on smaller scales, it would have a greater impact than their individual freegan practices. I’m not suggesting that they discontinue their freegan practices — to the contrary, I’m thinking they could brainstorm about ways to harness private enterprise and ingenuity to get more freeganism happening on a larger scale, without the individual dumpster diving and scavenging. How do you stop the ‘waste’ from entering the dumpsters in the first place and get it to where it might be re-used?
One final note: it is distressing to note that Miracle-Gro (Scotts) is suing TerraCycle on a very dubious legal basis — see the blog about the case here. However, it also gives me hope. The corporate behemoths and Goliaths are scared of the shifting marketplace, the very real movement towards sustainable and green business. They’ll do everything they can to maintain their grip on the consumer landscape, to keep us ‘loyal’ to their brands through greenwashing and lip-service to environmental and ecological issues. But when the real deal comes along, with a story so compelling that even the mass media sits up and takes notice, the mega-corproation resorts to lawsuits and scare tactics. Typical, and predictable.
One larger question, for ‘progressive’ corporations, is how to deal with the competitive landscape that uses litigation as a tactic to increase market share or for publicity. How does one play this game without getting dragged down into the mud? (Not that mud is bad…ah, how the conventions of language reveal so much about our culture…)
Freeganism does sound more convincing to me than vegetarianism/veganism but I have a problem with understanding what keeps it going. Perhaps I’m limited in my thinking but it seems to me that the movement relies entirely on what it despises. What if people weren’t idiotically wasteful with food? What if certain measures — not as radical as freeganism — curbing mindless consumerism became more common in our communities? What would happen to freegans then, how would they be able to sustain the movement? Little steps are not as romantic as dramatic changes. Yet they can slowly lead to greater changes and ideas constructed not just against something but with an energy and purpose of their own.
I’m looking at this whole issue from the outside, from a completely different context, so I’m sure there’s more to it… Maybe I just can’t see it.
What strikes me as really odd is that the freegans described in the article didn’t seem too suspicious about the food from the dumpsters. Why? I don’t just mean that a lot of it must be old but what about the nutritional value? Isn’t that somehow important?
[...] Pig Lipstick points out that a more constructive anti-consumerist approach for the Freegans would be to start businesses that use waste to create new products, in other words, to give back to society. Terracycle, a company that has concocted a liquid plant fertilizer from worm poop (they feed the worms organic waste), which is then packaged in old plastic soda and water bottles, has been so successful that Scotts-Miracle Gro is suing Terracyle (claiming the products look similar and that Terracycle is lying about their product’s effectiveness). Anti-consumerist capitalism is certainly one way to counter waste – one of the most harmful side effects of consumerism – and to create products we want because they appeal to our desire to take care of our planet and ourselves. [...]