I work at one of the mentioned Natural Food Retailers and have a friend that routinely dumpster dives at the regional distribution center. I just spent a night at his place and ate a great breakfast of organic bread, juice, milk and cookies.
The store that I work at has a compactor that I would not enter into, but the distribution center has overflow dumpsters that you wont get squished in. these centers are prime dumpster diving locations because they discard products well before their expiration date because retail stores will not accept a product that doesnt have at least 7 days shelf life.
My friend retrieves products out of dumpsters that are 2 to 10 days away from thier sell date and most are sealed.
I have no problem eating these foods and would feed them to my child if I were in a financial bind.
Also, the fact that there is so much time and energy used to produce and transport these high quality products, only to have them dumped, makes diving a moral bonus. Its a pity so much good stuff is tossed and I'm happy people can nourish themselves for free.
Very creative! but time consuming during a very busy time of year. I don't understand why everyone thinks gift wrap is such a BIG expense???? I bought a 40 sq. ft. roll of AMERICAN MADE gift wrap at Walmart for 96 CENTS!!!
Everyone is entittled to their own opinion of course. My opinion is that the advice is very good... everyone needs a financial planner. Perhaps that planner can be one's own self if they have spent the enormous amount of time needed to deliver. A financial planner, certainly an honest one, is well qualified to render that opinion. Perhaps this one is a raving crook as you seem to imply. I'm more inclined to believe you have a burr up your ass... and don't realize it.
While I favor fee only planners, the fact is, you pay them up front, generally by the hour. With commission planners, you often see no fee. Their advice tends to be more limited, but less costly. And for those who have less, this may be the more practical approach.
Personal finance is not simple. And the less you have, the more important it becomes to use it wisely.
Invest in index funds? There are hundreds of choices. Buy all of them? A little research reveals they fluctuate just like other stocks... because, they are stocks.
Having lived and worked in Bolivia for several years I think when people say things like "I wouldn't do it to feed my child. Not even if we were starving" they are not cognizant of what it really means to be "starving." Working through lunch and getting a hunger pang or two is far from starving- seeing any child, let alone your own, literally dying from lack of food will overcome a lot of the "is that banana clean" issue in that rematk.
You are right on every one of these points!
I own a restaurant with my husband and it has transformed my life, I love it more than anything I've ever done but the first two years of course we "lost" money (part of the business plan).
If I were to give ONE piece of advice and one alone:
Double the amount of capital that you think you need. Get credit lines BEFORE you need them.
Okay two: Also, hire a good accountant and have a good lawyer at the ready, just in case.
Great article! It is much better for the planet if we share our resources rather than each household needing to have their own. But, as we can see from all these comments, problems sometimes do arise in these informal sharing situations.
There are other "institutionalized" ways to share that are regulated and eliminate the personal hurt feelings when one neighbor breaks another neighbor's things. Car-sharing is one example. Tool lending libraries are another.
When I moved out on my own 13 years ago my room mate & I discovered "Dumpster Diving". While we never searched for food, we found many many treasures. A regular stop was at a cleaner's who apparently threw out unclaimed clothing. We got coats and all kinds of nice surprises there. We found a Payless Shoe Source that regularly had decent unworn shoes in the dumpster. Behind malls we found everything imaginable from CDs to furniture, most of it pristine. Having worked in grocery & at a bakery I'm not disturbed by people who get food this way. At the bakery the artisan breads we threw out were simply a couple of days old. At grocery stores it's generally because the food is past it's pull date or slightly wilted. I think Freeganism is wonderful, and if I were a little less afraid of getting chased off, I'd do it.
I really don't have a problem with boxed, canned, wrapped food from the dumpster unless it is wet, bulging, etc. However, in my current area, dumpsters seem to be always locked or behind locked gates so I've never had a chance to look here. Also, stores in this area don't seem to have clearance racks except after holidays and then it's usually just candy. In NE I would routinely check dumpsters and remove what I know I could put to good use - from food, magazines, furniture, silk flowers, etc.
I grew up in a rather poor family and at times didn't have much to eat (which makes me recoil a bit from the first comment - I couldn't imagine starving just because you don't want to feed your children dumpster food). My step-father used to come home with all sorts of things he'd picked up from the dumpsters behind grocery stores - bread, potato chips, boxes of other dry goods. The most common reason for disposal of these things seemed to be that they were one or two days beyond the expiration date, and I don't think that any of these things were ever actually stale or spoiled.
The idea of bringing home open vegetables or cheese though ... that might be going a bit far.
@Eden:
I don't see freeganism as being about being poor or cheap, necessarily. You say "Get a job" like they're just being lazy, but I think they're acting out of a desire to mitigate the incredible amounts of waste in our current society.
Pesticides and herbicides were probably used to grow the food, and fossil fuels were almost definitely used to gather and transport to food to the store. Add in any paper or plastic packaging - then imagine all those resources dumped, unused, into the trash. Doesn't that seem kind of...disgusting, in a way?
I greatly admire people who stand by their convictions and do what they can to reduce their ecological footprint.
I joined the trader joes freegan bandwagon a few months ago and it is amazing. My fridge is always stocked with eggs, bananas, bread, tortillas, vegetables, pesto and orange juice. Honestly I eat better now than I did before I moved to semi-freegan and I spend almost nothing on food now. Just watch out for dairy and meat products, everything else is good.
Honestly, the intro gave me a chuckle. The way it actually went down and the interaction with the freegan . . . classic. I'm interested to see how this discussion unfolds.
I would have to say no, I wouldn't do it to feed my child. Not even if we were starving. I would wonder why it was there in the first place, just like you. Besides, if there's "nothing wrong with it", why doesn't the grocery store donate it to a food pantry? They can write it off either way. Just my 2 cents.
I live in an apartment building. It’s a fairly big one, too. The thing with living in such buildings is that people hardly know each other. I think I’d easily miss my neighbors when walking in street. It’s also quite hard to collectively agree on anything in such a building. As soon as someone mentions money it’s a deal stopper… And things need fixin’ or replacing. Living in an apartment building really shows you how far apart people can be, yet still live under the same roof and sharing most of it.
Sharing has become institutionalized to the extent that people see government and business as "them" rather than "us". Several comments talk about the garbage service as something that is being done to them. We share garbage services, roads, pools, cable systems, ambulances, and all of the activities of local, state, and federal government. These are all administered -- or at least regulated -- by "us": by public boards, committees and councils.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about an article in which someone expressed contempt for getting to know their physical neighbors, at the expense of virtual interaction. The money quote was, "I prefer to attend to friends and lovers through our cell phones rather than allow geography to determine who I can and can't relate with." If you're going to share effectively with people, you have to get to know them first and there are a fair amount of people who don't want to even do that.
Building a functioning society, where people know one another and can work together toward common goals is hard work and requires engagement both at the neighborhood level, but also the community level. It takes a lot of time. Sharing our time, to sort through these issues and make wise decisions for our community, is often the hardest thing to get people to do.
Joey, if you email the docs to me, I can attach them to this blog post.
My email address is <pbrewer@prairienet.org>. (Don't cringe over my posting my email address. It's been up on my website since the late 1990s. I don't think posting it here will bring me more spam than I already get.)
When our neighbor moved in we offered to share our (private) garbage service as we didn't begin to throw away what was allowed for pick-up. Over the past three years we have grown to share their ride'em lawnmower. We always add gas and make a contribution every year toward upkeep.
This past year we cut down limbs on both properties together and now use the wood to hold collective evening sits by the firebowl. Everyone brings their own refreshments and after an hour or so drift off for dinner. We also share trips to our pool in summer and their hot-tub in winter.
We rototill our individual gardens together and share seeds and excess produce. We have become so close that we have taken two cruises together. It is a great feeling to know that help on any project is right next door.
We also have on the property a large firepit for burning trash and 3 neighbors on the other side share in that. There sure are lots of good conversations over the blazes. Our huge orange tree produces for the extended neighborhood and we trade oranges for pink grapefruit.
Anymore, I check with the neighbors before I purchase any outdoor equipment. Usually, someone already has what I need.
I love the idea of circulating a list. Thanks for all the great thoughts.
Good post, good comments. Many of them seem to reflect the Dagwood Bumstead-Herb Woodley experience that loaned items come back damaged or don't come back at all. More modern comic strips never mention any kind of sharing, as far as I can recall.
A long time ago, borrowing and lending as well as shared ownership (boats, for example) seemed to be much more common. As our standard of living grew, sharing, even within families, dwindled. What I wonder is whether this development is just based on the convenience that stems from affluence making it possible to own most things we're likely to need. Or is it that human nature resists sharing? In which case, affluence has just allowed for the full expression of this natural tendency toward individualism and territoriality.
The fact that so many who commented have been willing to try lending provides a little support for the first, more optimistic possibility. After all, the best long-term solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma is to cooperate as long as the other party does the same. If the other prisoner cheats, of course, then you have to nail him.
Two examples: A neighbor and I rented a lawn airator. We used his truck to get it, we paid for it, and then we worked together to do both lawns. When I grew up on our farm, my dad owned a combine which he used to harvest other families' fields. They paid us, so we made some money, and they got their harvests in without having to own and maintain a large machine. In our small town borrowing from neighbors is the norm. An elderly neighbor had a riding lawn mower. She let a younger neighbor, who had a push mower, use it for his lawn if he would mow hers.
Currently, though, we cannot share garbage services with our neighbor(s). We get charged a monthly fee whether or not we ever use it. The most we can do is put our garbage over next to our neighbor's garbage so that the truck doesn't have to make so many little stops, which saves fuel and in-and-outs for the driver.
Followup: Even Moneyweek Magazine is no longer buying the 'official' (fake) statistics.
"The US economy is in terrible shape! Our government has been psychologically manipulating the American people every time they publish blatantly false data on employment and income that makes our economy look stronger than it really is. If the average American realized how bad things were, they might try to save more. But spending would collapse if they did, so the goal of the Bush Administration seems to be to hide any signs of a recession as long as possible.
If you don’t see it, it must not be there For those familiar with the government releases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS") just posted a benchmark data revision that showed the total number of workers employed on the payroll survey was 300,000 less than originally estimated for March 2007 (900,000 versus the 1,200,000 that was reported).
By the time the dust settles, and later benchmark revisions come in for the whole year, it is likely that all of the jobs added by the BLS Birth/Death Model in 2007 will be fictitious. This could mean there hasn’t been any job growth at all! Without the fiction of job growth, you can imagine how much worse it will be for consumer income, spending, and sentiment not to mention business investment plans."
could someone show me an example of the form, list, etc. that I would need to create a neighborhood share. I am very interested and would like to put something together for my neighborhood.
First, thanks to the writer for attempting to make us all pause and think about the bottled water craze and the enormous amount of plastic it creates. I bought a PUR dispenser for my refrigerator shelf- it works great! In addition, I reuse plastic water bottles (keep a few around)or put the water in a plastic drinking bottle that's not supposed to leach harmful stuff - Buy one at your local Health food store!There's also a new bottle made from CORN that looks exactly like plastic!
Lastly, the comments about haveing a reverse osmosis filter system has made me decide to have one installed in my home.
I like the suggestion of the large water dispensor as well, they have a system at our local Health Food Co-Op, I see people using it often.
Let's all make a commitment to TALK to our friends about this, and get them to start by purchasing a home filtration (Britta or PUR filter) for the tap or a pitcher. If everyone talks about it- we can start a new revolution and Empower ourselves with our own personal filtered water at home.
Happy Holidays!
(I wish I lived in Joey's neighborhood. Those folks have got it together.) We have neighbors next to us and across the way that would be open to something similar I am willing to bet.
I work at one of the mentioned Natural Food Retailers and have a friend that routinely dumpster dives at the regional distribution center. I just spent a night at his place and ate a great breakfast of organic bread, juice, milk and cookies.
The store that I work at has a compactor that I would not enter into, but the distribution center has overflow dumpsters that you wont get squished in. these centers are prime dumpster diving locations because they discard products well before their expiration date because retail stores will not accept a product that doesnt have at least 7 days shelf life.
My friend retrieves products out of dumpsters that are 2 to 10 days away from thier sell date and most are sealed.
I have no problem eating these foods and would feed them to my child if I were in a financial bind.
Also, the fact that there is so much time and energy used to produce and transport these high quality products, only to have them dumped, makes diving a moral bonus. Its a pity so much good stuff is tossed and I'm happy people can nourish themselves for free.
Very creative! but time consuming during a very busy time of year. I don't understand why everyone thinks gift wrap is such a BIG expense???? I bought a 40 sq. ft. roll of AMERICAN MADE gift wrap at Walmart for 96 CENTS!!!
Everyone is entittled to their own opinion of course. My opinion is that the advice is very good... everyone needs a financial planner. Perhaps that planner can be one's own self if they have spent the enormous amount of time needed to deliver. A financial planner, certainly an honest one, is well qualified to render that opinion. Perhaps this one is a raving crook as you seem to imply. I'm more inclined to believe you have a burr up your ass... and don't realize it.
While I favor fee only planners, the fact is, you pay them up front, generally by the hour. With commission planners, you often see no fee. Their advice tends to be more limited, but less costly. And for those who have less, this may be the more practical approach.
Personal finance is not simple. And the less you have, the more important it becomes to use it wisely.
Invest in index funds? There are hundreds of choices. Buy all of them? A little research reveals they fluctuate just like other stocks... because, they are stocks.
Shawn , you need to get out more. Really.
Having lived and worked in Bolivia for several years I think when people say things like "I wouldn't do it to feed my child. Not even if we were starving" they are not cognizant of what it really means to be "starving." Working through lunch and getting a hunger pang or two is far from starving- seeing any child, let alone your own, literally dying from lack of food will overcome a lot of the "is that banana clean" issue in that rematk.
You are right on every one of these points!
I own a restaurant with my husband and it has transformed my life, I love it more than anything I've ever done but the first two years of course we "lost" money (part of the business plan).
If I were to give ONE piece of advice and one alone:
Double the amount of capital that you think you need. Get credit lines BEFORE you need them.
Okay two: Also, hire a good accountant and have a good lawyer at the ready, just in case.
Take the dive. It's worth it!
Great article! It is much better for the planet if we share our resources rather than each household needing to have their own. But, as we can see from all these comments, problems sometimes do arise in these informal sharing situations.
There are other "institutionalized" ways to share that are regulated and eliminate the personal hurt feelings when one neighbor breaks another neighbor's things. Car-sharing is one example. Tool lending libraries are another.
I wrote a post on my blog not long ago about how learning to share and borrow can help us to save resources: http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2007/10/learning-to-share-and-borrow.html with links to tool lending libraries and other ideas.
When I moved out on my own 13 years ago my room mate & I discovered "Dumpster Diving". While we never searched for food, we found many many treasures. A regular stop was at a cleaner's who apparently threw out unclaimed clothing. We got coats and all kinds of nice surprises there. We found a Payless Shoe Source that regularly had decent unworn shoes in the dumpster. Behind malls we found everything imaginable from CDs to furniture, most of it pristine. Having worked in grocery & at a bakery I'm not disturbed by people who get food this way. At the bakery the artisan breads we threw out were simply a couple of days old. At grocery stores it's generally because the food is past it's pull date or slightly wilted. I think Freeganism is wonderful, and if I were a little less afraid of getting chased off, I'd do it.
I really don't have a problem with boxed, canned, wrapped food from the dumpster unless it is wet, bulging, etc. However, in my current area, dumpsters seem to be always locked or behind locked gates so I've never had a chance to look here. Also, stores in this area don't seem to have clearance racks except after holidays and then it's usually just candy. In NE I would routinely check dumpsters and remove what I know I could put to good use - from food, magazines, furniture, silk flowers, etc.
I grew up in a rather poor family and at times didn't have much to eat (which makes me recoil a bit from the first comment - I couldn't imagine starving just because you don't want to feed your children dumpster food). My step-father used to come home with all sorts of things he'd picked up from the dumpsters behind grocery stores - bread, potato chips, boxes of other dry goods. The most common reason for disposal of these things seemed to be that they were one or two days beyond the expiration date, and I don't think that any of these things were ever actually stale or spoiled.
The idea of bringing home open vegetables or cheese though ... that might be going a bit far.
@Eden:
I don't see freeganism as being about being poor or cheap, necessarily. You say "Get a job" like they're just being lazy, but I think they're acting out of a desire to mitigate the incredible amounts of waste in our current society.
Pesticides and herbicides were probably used to grow the food, and fossil fuels were almost definitely used to gather and transport to food to the store. Add in any paper or plastic packaging - then imagine all those resources dumped, unused, into the trash. Doesn't that seem kind of...disgusting, in a way?
I greatly admire people who stand by their convictions and do what they can to reduce their ecological footprint.
I joined the trader joes freegan bandwagon a few months ago and it is amazing. My fridge is always stocked with eggs, bananas, bread, tortillas, vegetables, pesto and orange juice. Honestly I eat better now than I did before I moved to semi-freegan and I spend almost nothing on food now. Just watch out for dairy and meat products, everything else is good.
Honestly, the intro gave me a chuckle. The way it actually went down and the interaction with the freegan . . . classic. I'm interested to see how this discussion unfolds.
It's one thing to choose that lifestyle for yourself. But to make your kids eat from the trash? Try getting a job and buying food for them.
I would have to say no, I wouldn't do it to feed my child. Not even if we were starving. I would wonder why it was there in the first place, just like you. Besides, if there's "nothing wrong with it", why doesn't the grocery store donate it to a food pantry? They can write it off either way. Just my 2 cents.
Debbie in Ft. Lauderdale
I live in an apartment building. It’s a fairly big one, too. The thing with living in such buildings is that people hardly know each other. I think I’d easily miss my neighbors when walking in street. It’s also quite hard to collectively agree on anything in such a building. As soon as someone mentions money it’s a deal stopper… And things need fixin’ or replacing. Living in an apartment building really shows you how far apart people can be, yet still live under the same roof and sharing most of it.
Sharing has become institutionalized to the extent that people see government and business as "them" rather than "us". Several comments talk about the garbage service as something that is being done to them. We share garbage services, roads, pools, cable systems, ambulances, and all of the activities of local, state, and federal government. These are all administered -- or at least regulated -- by "us": by public boards, committees and councils.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about an article in which someone expressed contempt for getting to know their physical neighbors, at the expense of virtual interaction. The money quote was, "I prefer to attend to friends and lovers through our cell phones rather than allow geography to determine who I can and can't relate with." If you're going to share effectively with people, you have to get to know them first and there are a fair amount of people who don't want to even do that.
Building a functioning society, where people know one another and can work together toward common goals is hard work and requires engagement both at the neighborhood level, but also the community level. It takes a lot of time. Sharing our time, to sort through these issues and make wise decisions for our community, is often the hardest thing to get people to do.
Joey, if you email the docs to me, I can attach them to this blog post.
My email address is <pbrewer@prairienet.org>. (Don't cringe over my posting my email address. It's been up on my website since the late 1990s. I don't think posting it here will bring me more spam than I already get.)
When our neighbor moved in we offered to share our (private) garbage service as we didn't begin to throw away what was allowed for pick-up. Over the past three years we have grown to share their ride'em lawnmower. We always add gas and make a contribution every year toward upkeep.
This past year we cut down limbs on both properties together and now use the wood to hold collective evening sits by the firebowl. Everyone brings their own refreshments and after an hour or so drift off for dinner. We also share trips to our pool in summer and their hot-tub in winter.
We rototill our individual gardens together and share seeds and excess produce. We have become so close that we have taken two cruises together. It is a great feeling to know that help on any project is right next door.
We also have on the property a large firepit for burning trash and 3 neighbors on the other side share in that. There sure are lots of good conversations over the blazes. Our huge orange tree produces for the extended neighborhood and we trade oranges for pink grapefruit.
Anymore, I check with the neighbors before I purchase any outdoor equipment. Usually, someone already has what I need.
I love the idea of circulating a list. Thanks for all the great thoughts.
I'm happy to share the documents we use, but someone will have to tell me how to get them to you. I'm new to this comment-posting thing.
Good post, good comments. Many of them seem to reflect the Dagwood Bumstead-Herb Woodley experience that loaned items come back damaged or don't come back at all. More modern comic strips never mention any kind of sharing, as far as I can recall.
A long time ago, borrowing and lending as well as shared ownership (boats, for example) seemed to be much more common. As our standard of living grew, sharing, even within families, dwindled. What I wonder is whether this development is just based on the convenience that stems from affluence making it possible to own most things we're likely to need. Or is it that human nature resists sharing? In which case, affluence has just allowed for the full expression of this natural tendency toward individualism and territoriality.
The fact that so many who commented have been willing to try lending provides a little support for the first, more optimistic possibility. After all, the best long-term solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma is to cooperate as long as the other party does the same. If the other prisoner cheats, of course, then you have to nail him.
Two examples: A neighbor and I rented a lawn airator. We used his truck to get it, we paid for it, and then we worked together to do both lawns. When I grew up on our farm, my dad owned a combine which he used to harvest other families' fields. They paid us, so we made some money, and they got their harvests in without having to own and maintain a large machine. In our small town borrowing from neighbors is the norm. An elderly neighbor had a riding lawn mower. She let a younger neighbor, who had a push mower, use it for his lawn if he would mow hers.
Currently, though, we cannot share garbage services with our neighbor(s). We get charged a monthly fee whether or not we ever use it. The most we can do is put our garbage over next to our neighbor's garbage so that the truck doesn't have to make so many little stops, which saves fuel and in-and-outs for the driver.
Followup: Even Moneyweek Magazine is no longer buying the 'official' (fake) statistics.
"The US economy is in terrible shape! Our government has been psychologically manipulating the American people every time they publish blatantly false data on employment and income that makes our economy look stronger than it really is. If the average American realized how bad things were, they might try to save more. But spending would collapse if they did, so the goal of the Bush Administration seems to be to hide any signs of a recession as long as possible.
If you don’t see it, it must not be there For those familiar with the government releases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS") just posted a benchmark data revision that showed the total number of workers employed on the payroll survey was 300,000 less than originally estimated for March 2007 (900,000 versus the 1,200,000 that was reported).
By the time the dust settles, and later benchmark revisions come in for the whole year, it is likely that all of the jobs added by the BLS Birth/Death Model in 2007 will be fictitious. This could mean there hasn’t been any job growth at all! Without the fiction of job growth, you can imagine how much worse it will be for consumer income, spending, and sentiment not to mention business investment plans."
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/39162/why-this-christmas-will-be-the-us-ec...
could someone show me an example of the form, list, etc. that I would need to create a neighborhood share. I am very interested and would like to put something together for my neighborhood.
First, thanks to the writer for attempting to make us all pause and think about the bottled water craze and the enormous amount of plastic it creates. I bought a PUR dispenser for my refrigerator shelf- it works great! In addition, I reuse plastic water bottles (keep a few around)or put the water in a plastic drinking bottle that's not supposed to leach harmful stuff - Buy one at your local Health food store!There's also a new bottle made from CORN that looks exactly like plastic!
Lastly, the comments about haveing a reverse osmosis filter system has made me decide to have one installed in my home.
I like the suggestion of the large water dispensor as well, they have a system at our local Health Food Co-Op, I see people using it often.
Let's all make a commitment to TALK to our friends about this, and get them to start by purchasing a home filtration (Britta or PUR filter) for the tap or a pitcher. If everyone talks about it- we can start a new revolution and Empower ourselves with our own personal filtered water at home.
Happy Holidays!
(I wish I lived in Joey's neighborhood. Those folks have got it together.) We have neighbors next to us and across the way that would be open to something similar I am willing to bet.