Free Republic

He forages in rubbish to put half-eaten food and still-usable items to good use. In the process, Daniel Tay has found a happier way to live - and is inspiring others to do likewise. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) SINGAPORE: He spots an open cake amid the used cans, old clothes and other rubbish. “There are three rules when it comes to eating food from a dump,” explains Mr Daniel Tay, 38, as he puts them into action. First, he examines the cake for mould, then sniffs it and finally licks it. This time, however, he does not take a nibble as he usually...

To be a freegan is to be a person who avoids exchanging money for food and other items — you recycle what is still good instead. To accomplish this, however, one has to be creative, maybe even nocturnal. “After the markets close, the shopkeepers put food on the sidewalk,” explains Aliza Eliazarov, who discovered this world of freeganism while on a newspaper assignment about dumpster diving. “Most of the food doesn’t even make it into the trash because people are there waiting for it.” Eliazarov, who has a degree in environmental engineering and an interest in conservation and preservation, signed...

For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery. Nelson, 51, is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at upscale restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent. On this afternoon, she thawed a slab of pate that she found three days before...

Posted on Wed, Nov. 29, 2006 California professionals dine out of Dumpsters By Doug Oakley Palo Alto Daily News (MCT) PALO ALTO, Calif. - Cynthia Powell and Stephen Vajda are unabashed Dumpster divers who get much of their weekly food from garbage cans. The two educated Berkeley, Calif., professionals - who are not hungry or otherwise in need - say they are motivated by a growing conservation movement with a mantra that wasting resources, especially food, is shameful. Powell and Vajda estimate they can save up to $100 a week by dining on day-old bread, vegetables and sometimes chocolate from...

Out: the media showing homeless people scrounging for food in dumpster as an indictment of the economy under conservative presidents. In: the media showing middle class young people scrounging for food in dumpsters as an indictment of capitalism’s success. Washington Post staff writer Megan Greenwell devoted her article on the front page of the August 16 Metro section to the new trend for young liberal dumpster divers. Prince Frederick, Md teen Bryan Meadows “considers himself a ‘freegan,’” Greenwell wrote, describing the term as “a melding of the words ‘free’ and ‘vegan’” because Meadows “tries not to contribute to what he...

These people don‘t eat out of dumpsters because they‘re poor and desperate. They do it to prove a political point. You wouldn‘t expect someone to choose a lifestyle that involved eating out of dumpsters. Kind of seems like something you do as a desperate last resort. But there‘s an entire society of people who willingly get their meals out of the garbage. They‘re called freegans, and they say they have a reason for doing it.

"I've got yogurts!" Stephen Woloshin shouts in triumph, causing other members of his group to lift their rummaging arms and heads from the rubbish bins outside a Manhattan supermarket. ADVERTISEMENT Teachers, social workers and students, Woloshin and his fellow scavengers are far removed from the swollen ranks of New York's homeless, belonging instead to a new faction on the fringes of the environmental movement. As "freegans," they regard over-consumption as a pernicious global trend and seek to demonstrate how people can feed themselves for "free" on the mountains of produce discarded by others. On one particular evening, the group, kitted...

One man's trash Freegans find treasures in a dumpster-diving lifestyle that defies consumerism By Will Evans -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Tuesday, May 27, 2003 There's a dumpster in Sacramento with delicious sweet rolls inside. Rich, chewy and a bit hard to find amid all the bakery trash, it's a good dessert to cap off a successful night of dumpster-diving for Tim Jones. Jones actually takes two, gobbling them as he pedals away on his bike, which is lugging a trailer loaded with groceries he's grabbed from another dumpster. Jones, 21, is a "freegan." It's a takeoff...