Through out my four years in college I created my own interdisciplinary studies of “slow consumerism”. My studies sought to reconnect to the production of what I consume by taking hands on classes in multiple disciplines involving the basic processes to create apparel items, wood and metal products, and agricultural production. Resting on the notion that overconsumption, environmental and social degradation is linked to the alienation from the processes involved in the production of what we consume, the sensual reconnection to the production of the material world is sustainable praxis. I realized that with a cultivated awareness of where consumer goods originated I had thought little of where they ended up. This research project provided a greater understanding of the unsustainable nature of the waste created by modern society and its linkage to overconsumption. Through my research I have concluded that dumpster diving is an example of slow consumerism.
Through out my teenage years I had heard about dumpster diving, the practice of salvaging wasted food from dumpsters. Several of my High School comrades actively dumpster dived and later went onto travel the world by alternative free means. It was not until the summer of my Sophmore year that I tried dumpster diving for myself. My summer roommate happened to survive largely off of dumpster food. In general she was a very communal person, exemplified by her “communal car”. Folks would convene to prepare feasts after successful runs to the dumpsters and it was not uncommon to bless the meal by thanking the dumpster. The first time she took me, I stood outside the dumpster. I was still very weary of the idea of getting inside a trashcan for both cleanly and legal reasons. Instead, I assisted the divers in transporting the copious quantities of food from dumpster to vehicle. The ingles dumpster, where my first experience took place, is a dumpster renown by Boone residents for the quantity and cleanliness of their dumpstered food. Unlike many dumpsters, produce is thrown out in boxes that are often times on top of the more unsanitary trash, such as discarded meat. As I continued to accompany my room ate on her dumpster quests I became more and more comfortable with the prospect of retrieving food for myself. For the last two and a half years dumpster food has supplemented my diet in varying degree and for one month over this past summer I survived solely on salvaged food.
On one occasion, while we were in the midst of collecting food a manager approached us. He scolded us for having the guts to steal from his establishment and explained that the legal consequences for dumpster diving is equivalent to stealing from the store. We had already collected several boxes of berries, apples, and a box of squashes that were placed in our back seat. He told us that we would have to put all of the food back inside the dumpster to rot in the landfill or else he would call the cops. I wished I had known what to say to him to convey the injustice of throwing perfectly edible food back into the trash. This experience raised many questions. Why is edible food not being given away to those who need it? Why would the manager of this establishment prefer for edible food to be rotting in a dumpster versus eaten by broke college students? Why is so much food produced in the first place, if our society is not appropriately using it? This paper has been a vehicle to understand the historical, social, political, and economic contexts in which the practice of dumpster diving has come to exist.
In the fall of 2010, a group of about eight to ten college students started up a food not bombs chapter here in Boone. We held weekly community food servings in various places in Boone. A few small farms donated vegetables to our organization, but predominately we collected our food from dumpsters. In our experience the organization served as a medium to make connections across socioeconomic boundaries through the practice of sharing food.
Food not Bombs is one of the most well-known organization that advocates for food recovery, either from dumpster diving or donations, in order to provide community food servings for those in need. Food not Bombs was founded in 1980 by a group of eight friends in Boston, including Keith Mchenry who continues to participate in the organization to this day. One of the founding beliefs of food not bombs is that food is a right not a privilege. The organization differs from religious charities because it is strongly politicized. At every food serving literature is available on content such as global inequalities, hunger, and food waste. All of the meals are purposely either vegan or vegetarian to make clear the organization’s stance against animal cruelty. The organization has also provided food for many international protests since the 1980’s. According to the food not bomb website, the organization has provided food for “occupations including Camp Casey outside Bush's ranch in Texas, at a 100 day occupation in Kiev, Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, at a two month Peace Camp on the west Bank in Palestine and at a 600 day farmer's occupation in Bosnia and Herzegovina Square in Sarajevo. Volunteers also helped organize and shared meals at the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle and provide logistical support for many other anti-globalization actions.”(Foodnotbombs.net).
I was fortunate enough to meet one of the founding fathers of food not Bombs, keith mchenry. He explained to us the legal consequences he has faced for reappropriating wasting food to those in need; Through out his career he has been arrested over one hundred times for serving food to those in need and exercising his right to free speech. He explained that virtually every police station across the country is equipped with literature on the subversive nature of food not bombs as an organization. As of this year, food not bomb has faced increasing legal threats and chapters in various cities through out the world are facing arrests for serving food.
Food not bombs has deep roots in the town of Boone. In 1996 the first chapter was started by the rise up collective. The rise up collective was made up of about six to eight people who organized around the concept of creating community in Boone. The group held Food not Bomb servings twice a week in rotating locations. One former member of the rise up collective recounted serving food at the trailer park by Wallmart, which is inhabited largely by Hispanic folks. She told me that the residents were so grateful for the food, that food not bomb members would be invited into their homes. In addition, the collective created a free library and community space, located above where the business bulldog currently resides. The library consisted of hundreds of donated books that were free for the public to rent out. Many of the books were on radical content that was sparsely to be found at the public library. The collective also produced a free publication entitled “the fuse”. They started the first free bicycle work space that continues to this day. Globally, Food Not Bombs has historically worked in coalition with “really really free markets” and “bike not bombs”. Placing the movement in alignment with the activities of the diggers and the contemporary freegan movement.
“The Diggers” was a social movement that formed in the 1960’s in San Francisco’s infamous Haight-Ashbury district. The groups ideology was largely anarcho-pacifistic and used a variety of methods, including street theater, direct action, and art, towards the goal of creating a “Free city”. The group emphasized social and environmental justice as well, putting them in solidarity with the back to the land and civil rights movements. The group evolved out of the San Francisco mime troupe, which was a collectively run radical theater company that held public performances free of charge. The diggers established a variety of free stores, free medical clinics, free performance art, and free food servings. (Diggers.org). Warren Belasco recounts a performance of the diggers that took place in October 1966. The diggers arrived in a colorfully clad bus dressed in monk costumes. The diggers would shout “food as a medium” and begin handing out literature that they entitled “digger feed”. One digger described the purpose of the feeds as developing “collective social consciousness and social action”. They would set up the food outside of the bus and had each participant pass through a wooden “frame of reference”, to symbolize their intention of transformation embodied in their action. All of the food was “scavenged”, gleaned from friends farms, or grown on individual diggers farms. The diggers would portray their anarchistic idealization of equality with signs as “ if someone asks for a manager, tell him he’s the manager”.
The structure of food not bombs has been very evidently shaped by the digger free food servings that were accompanied by free literature in an attempt to radicalize the hungry. In addition, “it is important to acknowledge the way in which diggers and various other counter-cultural movements have shaped the contemporary context in which the modern freegan movement is unfolding” (Emery, 28)
The contemporary freegan movement began in the mid 1990’s. According to freegan.info, “Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources” Freegans limit their participation in the conventional economy by a variety of methods. This includes occupying unused building for housing and community spaces, making products themselves, guerilla gardening and utilizing and repairing wasted materials. The most common practice of freeganism is the practice of dumpster diving.
Dumpster diving practiced by freegans is distinct because it is done as a form of civil disobedience. Jeff Shantz coins this phenomenon as “propaganda of the deed”. Mercer and Edwards describe freegan dumpster diving as a “symbolic, political act against capitalist overproduction and waste…” (Emery, 29). Joan Gross describes the freegan movement as “an offshoot of the anti-globalization and environmental movements”. (Gross, 69). Implicit in freegan ideology is the understanding that global capitalism functions on the exploitation of the earth, animals and humans. As the term“freegan” combines the words “free” and “vegan”, freegans avoid all animal products in order to boycott the unfair treatment of animals. This also encompasses the understanding of the poor living conditions of animals in concentrated feed lots and slaughter houses, the environmental costs of meat, and the poor treatment of workers within meat production and slaughter facilities. “Dumpster divers are the most logical subset of the anti-globalization activists because they live in a way that does not create any demand for goods and therefore their lives do nothing to propagate the very system they are protesting” (Essig).
Freegan groups operate in Austrailia, New York, Oregon, Clairemont, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Texas.(Emery, 35). However, the forms of freegan groups are diverse and are shaped by the particular context and place in which they operate. The freegan group that operates in New York City is unique in that the city has curb side trash pickup, which makes the practice of picking through trash legal. Unlike dumpsters in many other cities that are deemed private property, the location of trash on public property has implications for the tactics employed by NYC Freegans.
The organization offers public “trash tours”, which are used as an educational tool to enlighten the general public on the abundance of food that is wasted in our current food system. The tours generally stop at three to four locations and participants collect food that is used for their weekly community meals and excess food is offered to individuals. Through out the tours freegan members give speeches that help participants make sense of the excessive food waste through the lens of freegan ideology: salvaging food from the trash does not solely translate into a rejection of consumerism. However, the speeches are tailored to be digestible to a wide audience. For instance, rather than blatantly articulating anti-capitalist rhetoric the speeches focus on a critique of the food system and consumer society. They avoid affiliating the group with anti-capitalism, as this is a pejorative term in American society. (Barnard 435). The group tours offer the advantage of causing a spectacle, as twenty people digging through the trash is rather uncommon in Manhattan. “Goldstein (2004) conceives of such urban spectacles as modes of asserting alternative identities and lifestyles, on example of the ‘politics of recognition’ that have supplanted the ‘politics of redistribution; in post-socialist political action” (Barnard 430).
These social movements and organizations illustrate Dumpster diving’s placement at the intersection of social, economic, legal and environmental issues. Implicit in food not bombs, the diggers, and the contemporary freegan movement is a critique of global capitalists production of excessive waste, inequality, environmental destruction, and identities as expressions of mass consumerism.
At the most fundamental level, dumpster diving is only possible with the over production of edible food waste and the disposal of functioning or fixable products. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in the United States almost 33 million tons of food was thrown away in 2010, which is 100 billion pounds. This also means that 3000 pounds of food is wasted per second. From farm to fork, "Almost half of the food in the United States goes to waste." Twelve percent of the food that we throw away as a nation was still edible at the time of discard. (xii, Bloom).
Food waste is one of the most harmful of all wastes due to methane gas that is released as food decomposes. Methane gas has eight times the warming capacity as carbon dioxide. The concentrated nature of food disposal through the use of landfills contributes greatly to climate change. The proliferation of food waste is also significant because of the wasted resources through out its production. To waste food is wasting the human labor required to produce food. It is a waste of water that is required for the production of food. It is a waste of energy as well. According to Jonathan Bloom if you factor in the use of energy required in both the production and distribution of food in America it accounts for 17% of America’s energy usage.
However, we have not always been a culture so heavily imbued with waste. The waste production in 19th century America differed markedly from today. The kitchen trashcan was not in existence. Reusing and recycling was a way of life. According to Elizabeth Royte, “ Food scraps went to farm animals. Individually packaged consumer goods were rare and expensive. Tin cans were saved for storage or scoops, jars for preserving food. Old clothes were prepared, made over into new clothes, or used for quilting, mattress stuffing, rugs or rags. Plastic was unknown.” (qtd in emery).
Municipal trash collections came into being in the 1880’s. Before this time, trash in urban areas was simply thrown onto the street and waste was an integral part of urban dwellers physical environment. Poor children could make a living by scavenging for discarded materials on the street and sell the items to a local rag picker. This facilitated the “exchange of unwanted material from the consumer back to the manufacturer: people from the middle and lower classes exchanged used rags, bones, bottles, paper, and iron tea kettles or buttons, which pickers then sold back to manufacturers, who used these raw materials to manufacture their goods”. (Emery, 67). The utilization of garbage was indicative of social class and carries social stigma to this day. (Royte, 22).
According to Susan Strasser, “toward the end of nineteenth century, disposal became separate from production and Americans’ relationship to waste was fundamentally transformed. Trash and trashmaking became integral to the economy in a wholly new way: the growth of markets for new products came to depend in part on the continuous disposal of old things “(qtd in emery). The amount of trash produced rose significantly at the beginning of the twentieth century due to “population growth, greater consumption and more efficient [trash] collection” (Melosi 115).
However, during the both of the world wars there was a revived interest in reducing waste. The great depression being sandwiched between the two world wars further engrained the practice of frugality as a way of life. In this time period waste would have been considered unpatriotic. With posters such as” food is ammunition-don’t waste it”. (Bloom, ..)
However, Postwar America stimulated the ever-growing culture of consumption and simultaneously a culture of waste. With the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides the industrial food system was able to produce more food than ever before. Yields increased and farmers were encouraged with subsidies to maximize production. Due to increase of supply, the price of food was lowered significantly. In 1957 food was 22% cheaper than the former decade. (Bloom).
Smaller farms were put out of business due to the economic pressure to increase production size. From 1935 to 1997 the number of farms in the United States shrunk by 70%. This drastic decrease in the amount of citizens growing their own food has resulted in a general lack of knowledge of food and alienation from the sources of where their food comes from. Alice Water, an elementary garden facilitator described the decrease in wastefulness that occurs with small children if they actively participate in growing or cooking their own food. It is safe to assume this is true across all ages. The value embedded in a homegrown tomato is much greater than one that costs fifty cents from the grocery store.
Food as a commodity creates a distorted relationship to food. Consumers judge the quality of produce upon their appearance not taste. There is an expectation for perfect and uniform produce, however life forms do not reproduce in this mechanistic manner organically. Consumers often adhere rigidly by use-by dates because they have lost the knowledge to know whether a food is edible or not.
Due to governmental subsidies of the industrial food system and overproduction of food, the price of industrial food is not fairly representative of the social and environmental cost of its production. Cheap prices make food waste a petty matter. Laurie Essig notes “Without waste, consumer capitalism cannot charge for the luxury of the flawless tomato or the freshly baked bagel.” (Essig) Waste is necessary in order to create new markets.
The ability to accumulate material wealth has come to signify the idea of “happiness” and freedom in 21st century American society. Gustav Speth notes Americas blind faith in the idea that economic growth will ensure Americans well-being. Speth notes the ambiguity of the phrase “a right to the pursuit of happiness” as used in the declaration of independence. One could interpret the concept of happiness as the well-being of a society as a whole. However, it could also be interpreted as the well-being of one individual. Speth describes how the term began signifying the latter as the newly formed society practiced a capitalist economy. The right to happiness has come to signify the right to increasing amounts of material wealth for the individual not the whole of society. He references a number of studies that have measured well-being of differing nations in relation to their economic development. One of the overarching findings of the research studies that he references is that subjective well-being does not increase at the same rate as material wealth. In fact it plateaus at a “moderate level of income” and in some instances well-being declines. This suggests that an overabundance of material wealth can actually lead to psychological and physical sickness.
As Ferrel eloquently articulates, in modern America many people constitute their identities with what clothing and products that they purchase. “In this sense, consumer culture creates and sustains among its adherents a sort of existential vacancy- a personal void, a material longing promoted by the same corporate advertisers whose products promise its resolution. But in the same way that consumer culture empties individuals of their identity, it fills their trash bins and dumpsters with its waste.” (162)
As noted previously, the role of scrounging in America has taken on various connotations in the history of our nation. The shifting moral character and ambiguity of the practice is true today as well. In 1988 the US supreme court ruled that curbside trash, which sits on the margins of private property, “therefore is subject to police search without warrant, basing its ruling in part by the notion that curbside trash is already ‘readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public” (Ferrel, 11). However, more cities nationally have outlawed the practice on various grounds. Some cities have outlawed scrounging, claiming that the content of dumpster’s belong to the city or that dumpsters are private property. According to a Food Lion manager in Boone, Dumpster diving is illegal on the grounds of trespassing private property. As I had already learned, he restated that salvaging food from a dumpster has the same legal punishment as stealing merchandise from the store itself. Jeff Ferrel describes dumpster diving as existing “somewhere along the boundaries that separate the private domain of the home from the public spaces of social life, the private property of the individual or business or from the shared resources of the community. “ (Ferrel, 24).
For both legal and cultural reasons the practice of dumpster diving is a marginalized activity. It is culturally marginal due to that it contradicts the paradigm of the American consumer of late capitalist America. As previously noted, scrounging has historically been indicative of low social class, therefore today the practice is stigmatized. The American perception of dumpster diving “stirs sentiments, not of systematic crisis or inequity, but rather personal failure or individual pathos.” (Shantz, )However, as the diggers, freegans, and food not Bombs members indicate, many people have marginilized themselves intentionally. They have created alternative cultures and identities that reimagine what it means to live well.“Working with little more than abandoned shopping carts and their own ingenuity, urban scroungers create a complex culture of scavenging, interrupting the inexorable material flow from shopping mall to landfill, and undertaking to redeem contemporary U.S society from the wreckage of its own failed arrangements". (Ferrell, 28).
The sociality inherent in the social movements of the Diggers, Food not Bombs, and Freeganism challenges the glorification of the individual constructed in western society. A recent study conducted by finchman in the UK, notes that “fun” and “socializing” are the two most common motivations for dumpster divers surveyed in the UK, in addition to political reasons. (Mercer and Edwards, )These social movements all operate under the vision of a gift economy that emphasizes the good of the whole over just a few, in other words mutual aid (Shantz). All of the Dumpster Diver’s I have interviewed in Boone expressed that they generally salvage enough food to share with their friends. Anthropologist professor of Yale notes that cultures operating under gift economies “would have found the very premise that the point of an economic transaction- at least one with someone who was not your enemy- was to seek the greatest profit deeply offensive.” (Shantz, )
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