On Being a Freegan

I don't like labels, but I'll take this one. For the past few months, I've been living off the waste of capitalism. Without a doubt, I eat better than most of wealthy American. I certainly eat better than I used to, even when I restricted myself to shopping only at the local farmers markets and the amazing Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica. These days, my diet consists of blueberries, strawberries, bananas, pears, apples, oranges, fancy salads and packaged greens, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, artichokes, eggs, the occasional melon, and other surprise treats like coconut water, lychees, roasted pistachios, and apricot walnut tarts. Much of the food I haul out of dumpsters parked behind nearby grocery stores is organic and consists primarily of fresh produce, bread, meat, and eggs. lt must be sorted, bits of it composted, and typically comes wrapped in packaging that needs to be recycled. Dumpster diving is less convenient and a little more time consuming than shopping just for what I plan to consume over the course of a week, but the food is free and I can't stand by quietly knowing that so much quality food is going to waste, especially given how much energy it takes to produce what we put onto our plates.

In Los Angeles alone, there are 1.7 million food insecure people living with hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, millions of pounds of food are trashed each day, translating into 3,000 pounds per second! Put simply, the quantity of food waste and packaging that ultimately ends up in a landfill, taking hundreds of years to decompose and producing harmful greenhouse gases, is an atrocity on multiple levels.

My friends have taken to eating the food I bring home from dives. They look forward to their weekly deliveries, and I'm working on setting up a specified delivery point at a friends house where we've stashed a spare refrigerator to store our loot so that I can eliminate the work of delivering (as if it's work to visit with friends). Ultimately, what I'd prefer is to see this food going to people who need it, not that my friends, many of whom are artists and earn very little money, don't fall into that category. But with so many people living with hunger just in my city alone, there should be a better way of distributing what grocery chains deem waste. I know many organizations are working on trying to foster 0-waste food policies, so hopefully my days of freeganism are numbered. In the meantime, I'll happily perch myself on my front stoop devouring a baby spinach salad laced with goat cheese, cranberries, and candied pecans. One woman's waste is another woman's treasure. Yum!