So my roommate and I have been making a point of checking out local dumpsters at least once a week to keep food we could eat out of landfills and in our tummies (check out Freegan.org for info about the whys and hows of dumpstering.) What is starting to piss me off is a local trend to lock dumpsters in their own little shed...I mean come on! What is the deal, we can't have the food you are throwing away that is going to end up in a landfill? We are trying to do something good 1) save the environment, as much or as little as we are able by cutting back on waste 2) save our wallets and fill our bellies at the same time (it isn't cheap trying to eat decient all the time, so sometimes you have to cut corners,) 3) have some fun! Dumpstering is urban foraging and it is fun! If you haven't tried it, well you should! So we are both a little upset by this new trend, the trend of locking the dumpsters up in a shed.
I think I understand what is going on, at least locally. Lots of people dumpster in this neiborhood, (I mean I know several houses who live off of dumpstered food right near me,) and some probably aren't the most respectful about it. When me and my roommate go out, we bring our own bags, we only take what we can use and we don't leave a mess! Apparently some people in the neiborhood do leave a mess, however, because dumpsters now have to be locked up!
The other thing that could be happening is that larger corportations (the ones most likely to lock their dumpsters up,) are afraid of some dumpster-diver trying to sue them after they get either real or fabricated food poisoning to make millions (or even thousands.) Everyone is so damn sue-happy these days, I can't even get Trader Joe's dumpstered food anymore!
Well that's it...just needed to let off a little steam about my bad night at the dumpsters...
Love,
Sycamore Fitch
I have never heard of this as a 'common' practice among environmentally concious people. Homeless, yes, they can be some of the MOST environmentally aware people, but for students? I've never heard of it. I'm going to check out the website, because I kind of like the idea.
Many businesses lock up the dumpsters, not to keep people from taking out of them, though I'm not a fan of the idea (bacteria and all), but to keep people from dumping into them.
It is a bigger problem than people think about.... in the middle of hte night, people dump off things that they can't throw away at home (televisions or other large items), and there are even people who try to use public dumpsters to dispose of firearms they've used in crimes.
Or just everyday garbage.
Trash disposal is expensive. College students don't realize this until they move out and have an apartment. Believe me, it's costly.
yup. I used to live in a city in which you were limited to 1 garbage can ( to 'encourage' recycling)... with a nice sized fee for each additional bag you put out.
After a few years, enough people complained that they gave people a second can, for a lesser fee.
They still wouldn't take yard waste, saying that it fills up landfills too quickly, forgetting that it helps landfills to biodegrade more quickly.
with five other people....we live in a sort of collective house to cut back on costs for everyone...there are no dorms at my college, so you are required to find your own housing. Yeah, I can see how people dumping their own trash into a dumpster might be a problem...
Sharing housing is the best. It's great to be young.
Yes, I'm don't like the idea of dumpstering because eating food from a dumpster could make you ill, also.
Read my blog!
but I have discovered recently that eating too much cheese makes me very ill...I have an extremely tough immune system, having grown up in a family where foraging was part of our daily lives...so naturally "urban foraging" as some people call dumpstering was an easy transistion from the rural foraging I did growing up. We where poor and in the summer, foraging was a big part of our food supply. I'm still poor and now urban foraging is a big part of my food supply.