Monthly Archives: November 2011

Discovering New Horizons

fruitWhere can one go dumpster diving on Monday around 5p.m.? Right, try going to a market. Right before closing time. First, we were thinking of going to the central big market, but then we thought that it was too late, so, we just went to Rakoci market which is closer to the BASE. There is no trash at the market itself, so we had to go to the ‘secret’ place that is sometimes open and where you can find some trash. There was almost no edible trash there, but still in one of the huge trash bins we discovered loads of reddish with rotten leaves. So, I had to literally dive into it as the reddish was at the very bottom of the bin. This was not enough, so we decided to check another market nearby – the Hunyadi square market.

On the way there we have discovered a very interesting source of trash – a trash bin of a hotel standing at the parking space. There we dumpstered quite a lot of hotel soap, shampoo, slippers, eye cover for sleeping, as well as some food. My favourite object was a ginger bread heart from Oktoberfest in Munich.As we got to Hunyadi market, the first thing we did was going to the ‘secret’ place with the trash from the market, and there we discovered some fruit and tomatoes. The worker came in after 1 minute, but he was patient enough to wait for us to finish dumpster diving. So, at the end, we have got two big packages of stuff!


Go Freegan!

pigfood„There are nearly one billion malnourished people in the world, but the approximately 40 million tonnes of food wasted by US households, retailers and food services each year would be enough to satisfy the hunger of every one of them.“ Tristram Stuart, „WASTE“.

This is a blog about dumpster diving and freegan way of life.
Dumpster (trash bin or container) diving (like diving in the water) means searching things and food in trash.
Freegan = FREE + vegAN. Free means that a person is free from the capitalism and consumption, vegan means that a person does not consume animal products. Not all freegans are vegan though, but the idea is that anything that is thrown away is already purchased by someone who does not care about vegan philosophy and principles, so the dumsptered animal products can be consumed as they have already gone through the consumption cycle. Freegans tend to leave minimal ecological footprint by recycling commodities that have been thrown away by others. They have an alternative lifestyle based on independence from profit-driven economy and consumerism. Major freegan principles include sharing, solidarity, care about the environment, and FREEDOM.
I will post mostly my everyday freegan experiences ranging from dumpster diving in various cities to the practices of FreeShops (social aspect) and saving energy and resources (environmental aspect).

More facts about waste:
http://www.tristramstuart.co.uk/FoodWasteFacts.html

Freegan philosophy:
http://freegan.info/what-is-a-freegan/freegan-philosophy/