Freeganism – Is this the ultimate solution to debt problems?
I was watching the Oprah show recently - yeah ok I admit it I sometimes watch Oprah! But that’s about all the confessions you’re getting out of me today. Anyway Oprah had a piece on a really interesting topic - freeganism. Check out the show here.
Now before you start thinking it is some type of deep sea fish let me give you this definition that I pulled from Freegan.info website.
“What is a Freegan?
What does this have to do with me? Well I’ve done a little research into the freegan lifestyle and it’s fascinating. It might not be to everyone’s tastes and I admit that I find some of their techniques unappealing but overall I think it is taking the ‘Buy Nothing day’ which I spoke about previously to the extreme.
As I understand it the basic premise of Freeganism is to find and use food that has been discarded by supermarkets and restaurants. How do they do this? Well this is the interesting part. Freegans engage in a practice called dumpster diving. Dumpster diving is exactly what it says - diving into dumpsters and retrieving food that is still edible. It is effectively foraging for free food.
Again taken from Freegan.info website.
“Perhaps the most notorious freegan strategy is what is commonly called “urban foraging” or “dumpster diving”. This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods. Despite our society’s stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones”.
Extreme debt requires extreme measures.
If you are in extreme debt then you could do a lot worse than consider adopting some of the tactics used by freegans. Before you reject this idea out of hand I want you consider that a lot of the people engaged in Freeganism are highly educated and middle class. They have made a conscious choice to reject the consumerist aspects of our society. On the Oprah show there was the story of a couple who embraced the freegan lifestyles. One was a doctor and the other and Engineer. Click here for more info.
What I am about to say is a bit cynical and will probably get me in trouble with our Freegan friends so I apologize to them in advance, but why not adopt a semi freegan lifestyle for as long as you are in debt? If you are in debt then consider going freegan. What do you have to lose? I know this is an extreme lifestyle but the benefits are huge. You don’t necessarily have to agree with the anti-consumerist sentiment. All you have to do is go and participate and take the free food. Think of the savings this lifestyle will allow you to make? If you are concerned about being discovered by your friends and neighbors just tell them that you are making a political statement about how society has become too wasteful. They will admire your principles. In fact I would go as far as to say that you will gain some kudos and have a great thing to talk about at parties.
As always the point of this website is to help you reduce your debt. Freeganism is another way of doing it. You may start out with the aim of reducing your debt but I’m sure that after adopting the freegan lifestyle that you will come to appreciate the amount of waste that goes on in our society. The choice as always is yours.
Freeganism – is it sustainable?
I see what the freegans are trying to achieve and I admire them for it. As a society we waste too much all the while people are dying from starvation in poorer countries. However I wonder how practical and sustainable freeganism is from a long term perspective? To be honest I don’t know but the more popular it becomes and the more people that adopt it as a lifestyle then the less free stuff there will be to go around. What you will have is more people chasing limited free stuff. That said I do think that for the open minded among you it offers a very unique way of reducing your food expenses and in turn reducing your debt.
Would I turn Freegan?
I agree that as a society we waste too much. If freeganism can help solve that problem then I’m all for it. Would I currently turn freegan? If I’m honest I would have to say no. I know what you are thinking – I’m a bit of a hypocrite to write about becoming a freegan when I won’t turn freegan myself. I agree to a point. I said that I currently wouldn’t turn freegan but that is not to say if my financial situation deteriorated that I wouldn’t turn freegan. If my financial situation was that extreme that I couldn’t afford to put food on my table then I would become a freegan.
I have to admit that initially I dismissed freeganism as another form of misplaced tree hugging. I thought it was just rich college kids making a statement simply because they could afford to. However the more I learn about freeganism the more I understood what the movement was driving at and I have to say as a result I am more conscious about the amount of waste in my life and as my Mom always said “waste not, want not”.
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Posted in Freeganism
February 14th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
We have so much wealth in developed countries that we take it for granted. But we have so much because we want so much and we make so much. The fact that some people are wasteful of it does not make it wrong, waste is simply a choice and what looks like waste to you may not be in context. But let’s just say 50% of America decided to become Freegan’s. Would the other 50% be able to support them with free stuff waste? The movement, as you infer in your comments, is not sustainable, here is why I believe this to be true. (the following is very basic, at least it seems to me, but as a society we are so far away from the basics that many of us have forgotten). Either everyone would have to grow their own food and procure their own water and shelter, minimum for survival, or they would have to depend on other people to do some of this for them. A person does not have the right, moral or otherwise, to compel someone to do this for them (more later) so they either have to do something in return or depend on the benevolence of others. The more complex the needs or wants of a person the more difficult it is to find people who can do for them and for whom you can also provide something. Hence the advent of money. Money says that an individual has done something for someone that is of value and therefore has credits that can be bestowed on someone else that does something of value for them. Now I am free to do something for Gail that she needs and receive some of Gail’s credits in return and perhaps buy some food, which Gail isn’t able to provide unless Gail has a farm. The person with the Farm may live miles from me so another person adds value by transporting the food to near me, a market, and allowing me to pick and choose…and so it goes. Now even though a person doesn’t have the right to compel another to do for them there have been plenty of societies built around the fact that some people will do it anyway. One of these was fuedalism where the farmer farms and the guy or gal with the biggest gun takes what they want. Or Marxism where the “government”, who becomes the “guys and gals with the biggest guns” takes everything and distributes it without regard to me.
It is unfortunate that we are so successful at the free economy, and so poorly informed about how it works, that many people don’t know what they are asking for when they ask for a so called “communal” society.
Just for the record though I love the idea of using the techniques to get out of debt. No point in letting the waste go to waste.