Freeganism

Yesterday the BBC World Service radio program interviewed a guy who hasn't bought food in five years because he practices 'freeganism'.

You can read the whole definition from The Free Dictionary but the general idea is, "Freeganism is the practice of minimising one's adverse impact on the environment, animals, and human lives by limiting participation in the capitalist economy."

The guy in the interview gets all of his food from dumpsters and says he eats better than he did before he quit his job and turned freegan.

It seems he gets most of his food from restaurant or grocery store dumpsters where food is discarded after the 'sell-by-date' and before the 'consume-by-date'.

The Free Dictionary says that many associate freeganism with food, but actually the concept is a "broad-based lifestyle ethic encompassing food, housing, transportation, clothing, and all other necessities of daily life."

One of their concerns involves the "enormous volume of waste generated by a society that produces more than it actually uses."

One last bit from the definition:

"Freegans place a high value on community, sharing, and mutual aid.

They tend to reject the concept of private property, reflecting a school of thought common to anarchism and popularized by the anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon.

Freegans see the pressure to maintain employment in order to purchase commodities and pay for necessities like food and shelter as a form of oppression.

They view the advertising-driven push to constantly purchase new commodities as a form of manipulation for profit."

I'm not a freegan ... I still very much like holding down a job and participating in capitalism ... but some of their ideas overlap mine.

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