FREEGAN Style

[Southern Image]

http://freegan.info/

What is a Freegan?

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

Our Local News broadcast this story the other night. The next day me and my sister went to Costco to get pies and food for Thanksgiving. One of the workers told us that the day after Thanksgiving, all that food would be stuck in the dumpster. The food is still good but by law, since they have to put an expiration date on it, it has to be tossed.


Would you do it?

[Nakor]

I would argue against stupid trashing of good food... but I wouldn't eat said trashed food. x_x

[Southern Image]

I would argue against stupid trashing of good food... but I wouldn't eat said trashed food. x_x

I know , it does sound gross. But the food is still wrapped or boxed. It's not dirty and it isn't just food, but wine, beer, soda, etc....

I think it should be donated to homeless shelters and such.

[Nakor]

You know, they won't let people bring pre-prepared food to the homeless street meals any more around here. Someone might be trying to poison them or something. >_< You're only allowed to bring the materials now where they're prepared under supervision. So you probably couldn't get away with that either.

Because, y'know, it's not like they're desperate for food or anything. ****ing government. >_<

[wavemeister]

I would argue against stupid trashing of good food... but I wouldn't eat said trashed food. x_x

I know , it does sound gross. But the food is still wrapped or boxed. It's not dirty and it isn't just food, but wine, beer, soda, etc....

I think it should be donated to homeless shelters and such.

In Germany, there is "Die Tafel" ("The Table"), similar organized to food banks in the US.

While the idea in itself isn't bad, there's something dubious behind it, at least in Germany: the Tables are originally an conception of a think tank, McKinsey & Company (I'm sure that McK "borrowed" this concept w/o compensating the originators...). And it wasn't humanity in the minds of the people usually advising companies and, since the 1990s, gouvernments in "cost efficiency" usually by sacking people, but the Tables are something like the attempt in thinning out gouvernment welfare by leaving vital parts to private organizations - which can't be sued.
Anyway, the Tables can register a growing popularity, and it's not only the "real" poor and homeless (of which many not being eligible for free food by those Tables since most of them demand to be registered at the job offices) standing in line for the leftovers of the supermarkets, but more and more "normal" people who are working in a minimum of one job (like police officers, for example - and that's no joke).
Well done, McKinsey!

Now, in countries which belong to the richest in the world, no one should be forced to be fed out of dumpsters "out of grace", but I guess that's just my completely irrelevant and stupid opinion that virtually free enterprise which had also brought us the various current crisis' simply sucks galore.

Avoiding an overproduction of food is another thing...okay, that's another story. I'm still trying to get behind the concept why I can buy a yoghurt made in Bavaria with the container made in Poland and the alu lid produced in Italy to be carried 300 miles up north from where the stuff was filled in the European container, but that's another irrelevant diversion of my mind (have I mentioned that the local dairy production plant will be closed at the end of the year?).