this group is part of an ideology known as freeganism. they live lives of scavengers, convinced that society wastes too much.

tim said that he struggled to find a way out of what looked like a really cloned and synthetic world that people get plugged into.â and just before graduating from high school, in the spring of 2005, he found it. he met some young people who had found the boarded-up mansion on the west side of buffalo, which they hoped to take over and convert into a utopian safe haven for freegans and other dropouts. mark and ruth remember their sons departure vividly. that friday night he came downstairs with a backpack, hugged, kissed us, got on his bike and moved,â ruth says. there was no stopping him.â

one main gripe that freegans have with american society is just how much food we waste. in his book waste: uncovering the global food scandal,â tristram stuart writes that american households, retailers and vendors waste about 40 million tons of food each year. stuart, who is also an activist, does not identify himself as a freegan. what i want to do is end the possibility of freeganism because i want the whole food business to stop the waste that makes freeganism possible in the first place,â he told me. stuart says that freeganism serves a purpose, because it draws attention to a problem, but it does not offer the solution. and this observation reveals a quandary inherent in the freegan movement. freegans maintain that by salvaging waste, they diminish their need for money, which allows them to live a more thoughtful, responsible and deliberate existence. but if they succeed in their overriding goal, and society ends up becoming less wasteful, the freegan lifestyle will no longer be possible.

tim got into some legal trouble on his way home from that trip. according to his lawyer, tim and several friends were working for a farmer who compensated them with marijuana. it was a quintessential freegan arrangement â” no money was exchanged. while driving back to buffalo with his friends, tims car was stopped in illinois and searched by the police. there were two pounds of marijuana in the vehicle, and tim was charged with two felony counts. he is pleading not guilty.

i had a few freegan sites bookmarked, but can't find them now. mostly i have the same slight revulsion to this idea as i do when i see a mullet. same world, different planets. these people eat things i wouldn't even smell.

if there are crack vials and needles lying around then this is a crack house and shooting gallery. calling yourself a freegan instead of an addict makes sense if you are in the middle of rationalizing a physical addiction by wrapping it in a lifestyle label.

but i agree with miko: these freegans aren't doing a great job being anti-consumption banner-carriers, though i don't think that was their intention. as a vivid shot of a different lifestyle, they make for interesting human interest reporting, and the article did mention some folks "grew up" and moved on from the squatter freegan lifestyle, but it didn't do much to cover how those who moved on are now living their lives. the traveling acrobat is mentioned in passing, with the note that she "got a place of her own," as if that makes her part of the system and no longer of interest as a counter-consumerist.

it became necessary to destroy freeganism in order to save it.

rescued food from one store in just one day.more rescued food.secret freegan is one of my heroes. read all about the amazing things she does to help feed hundreds of people every year in her city.secret freegan: rescuing food to feed homeless-----------------------------------------------------

" to me, "freeganism" refers to a set of ideals related to how our actions (particularly consumption) impact the earth and its population. implementing the best use of resources is an important aspect of a freegan lifestyle. freeganism is practiced through such things as dumpster diving (using resources that would go to waste), voluntary work (sharing human resources, like time and skills), and finding ways to limit consumption and materialism (in our own lives and those of others)."

dumpster diving is a practice becoming more common among financially stable people, intertwined with the growing freegan movement. their name derived from a combination of "free" and "vegan", freegan

i saw the freegan cooking show coming when i read the headline. lol

why is it more gross to get perfectly good food from a dumpster than it is to throw away perfectly good food? i don't "freegan" because i believe in supporting local food growers. if you don't want to eat the stuff, or you don't like the idea of people going through the trash, then why not push for a composting program?

i could test his freegan dedication by having someone… anyone… serve free tofu or eggplant as the meal, but that wouldn’t be very christlike of me now, would it?â  no, it wouldn’t.

simple conservation works very well with efficiency and renewables to decarbonize our economy. but you don’t have to be a freegan, a dumpster diver, or even a freecycler, to conserve. simply buy less. buy fewer, smaller, later, and less often. it is also called living within your means, which we used to consider a virtue.