New York City – 11:26 P.M. – A pack of 8 to 10 messy looking, somewhat smelly, and hungry humans lurk in an alley behind a restaurant. They are delighting themselves in an all they can eat fest at the garbage dump, they search and ravage through the dumpster like a flock of starving vultures feasting over a carcass. After they are satisfied, they collect what they can and take it back home to a neglected run down building where there was a fire weeks ago. They are not quite homeless or starving due to the economy, in fact they hate mainstream economy and have rejected all of the social norms we live under. They have chosen to live like this. They are Freegans.
“The word freegan is derived from “free” and “vegan”. Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy.”
What may seem eerie and disgusting at first, the Freegan morals and messages are one to admire. You could call them the bacteria of the city, consuming and recycling our waste not only for their own survival but also as a statement against the society we live in.
“By recovering the discards of retailers, offices, schools, homes, hotels, or anywhere by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags, freegans are able to obtain food, beverages, books, toiletries magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, kitchenware, appliances, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, animal care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good. Rather than contributing to further waste, freegans curtail garbage and pollution and lessening the over-all volume in the waste stream.”
To me, they are a mix of anarchists and tree huggers in an urban set. They are young and strong-minded, never deviating from their beliefs, the belief that one can still exist and be part of something living outside of society.
“Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able.”
Just like you, when I first heard about them, I wondered why someone would want to live that like? Eating food from dumpsters, not having a stable reliable home, hitchhiking from place to place. But as I dug deeper into their society I began to understand why they were doing it. My whole life I have shared some of their beliefs. I have always considered myself to be a just a bit outside of mainstream society, trying my best to be different from all others (a very hard task in today’s world) and that is why I admire them, Freegans and all other “different” subcultures and societies.
For more information visit: www.freegan.info
I think the French filmmaker Agnes Varda would call them gleaners…You should watch her movie ‘The Gleaners and I’