One man’s trash is another man’s dinner

Barnard follows the principles of freeganism. Inspired by the term veganism, this philosophy focuses on “alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources,” according to the website freegan.info.

The trademark freegan practice is “dumpster-diving,” the salvaging of edible food past its display date that has been discarded by restaurants and stores. Barnard frequently gathers food thrown out both on and off campus.

“People don’t really understand the scale at which grocery stores are wasting food and the way it’s built into their way of doing business,” Barnard explained. “Grocery stores throw out hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food every day just because slightly blemished fruit or dented cans [don’t] fit into their view of perfect capitalistic abundance.”

Bakeries are particularly wasteful because they are built on the “baked fresh daily” premise, he explained, adding that while dumpster-diving for senior thesis research last summer in New York City, he found discarded rolls that were still warm.

Contrary to what one would expect, Barnard noted, no freegan he knows has ever gotten sick from eatin food obtained from dumpsters.

Freegan ideology

A new york Times article from June 21, 2007, said that freeganism “dates to the mid-’90s and that the movement has gained traction “in part as a result of growing frustration with mainstream environmentalism.”

Barnard said he agreed with that sentiment.

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“Changing out our light bulbs for more efficient ones is not going to solve the [environmental] problem,” Barnard said. “We have to get more radical in terms of the changes we make to our lifestyles.”

These changes, Barnard said, can include wearing old T-shirts instead of buying new ones or turning off the water tap. Any form of limiting consumption is consistent with freegan principles.

But limiting consumption is not enough, he noted, explaining that freeganism at its core is a politically motivated rejection of capitalism and the market economy.

“Our system is broken with respect to how we treat animals, each other and the environment,” he said.

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He noted that our society eats produce “grown by farms that exploit workers in the third world, shipped thousands of miles using fossil fuels, put into excessive packaging and put on the shelf at a marked-up price that enriches corporate owners instead of paying workers more.”

And at the end of the day, “all that exploitation goes to waste,” Barnard said. “Much of that [food] winds up going in the trash.”

Many grocery chains have also come into conflict with the dumpster-diving practices of freegans, Barnard said. Dependent on a “green” image, businesses such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s go to the extremes of posting security cameras and guards to protect their dumpsters from claims that they might be wasting usable produce and thus safeguard their reputation of being environmentally responsible, he explained.

Bringing freeganism to Princeton

Barnard has taken friends from Princeton to New York to dumpster-dive with fellow freegans. His friends were “shocked about the quality of the food and the extent of the waste,” he said.

Though freeganism is not widespread on campus, Barnard noted, Princetonians don’t have to eat out of trashcans to get involved in the movement.

Barnard views the 99 Alexander St. bicycle co-op, which provides free advice on how to fix and build bikes, as the most “freegan” activity on campus.

The bicycle co-op is open to University students and staff as well as the local community. It has its roots in the USG’s U-Bikes program, which recycles and rent outs abandoned bicycles picked up by Public Safety.

U-Bikes program manager Sean Gleason ’09, who volunteers at the co-op’s weekly clinic, said he believes the co-op fits into freeganism because it gives people the skills and means to fix their own bikes, and this in turn lessens their dependency on consumerism by giving them ownership over their own transportation.

“Freeganism is about living outside of capitalist consumerism, trying to live a lifestyle where there is no exchange of capital,” Gleason said. “When you look at the co-op, it’s about not exchanging capital for certain services.”

Salvaging discarded furniture is also a form of freeganism, Barnard said, noting that last year he observed several Princeton community members picking up furniture thrown out by students during move-out.

This consumer goods-focused dumpster-diving isn’t unique to Princeton. In 2006, a Wesleyan student made a documentary titled “Operation Ivy: Dumpster Diving at Elite Colleges,” which examined the recycling habits of students at Yale and Harvard, among other universities.

The film shows dumpster-diving students picking couches, tables, lamps and even i-Pods out of the trash.

“We as freegans choose to dumpster-dive because we try to make the best of living in a capitalist world,” Barnard said. “We want to change the world so we don’t have to dumpster-dive.”