Dumpster diving for dinner

In the summer after his sophomore year at Princeton, Alex Barnard ’09 was sent a New York Times article on “freeganism” by his girlfriend. The article came with a warning: If he became a freegan, she would break up with him.

Barnard did not heed her advice — though, despite her threat, the couple is still together four years later. Intrigued by the article, freegansim quickly became a part of his lifestyle on campus and, later, the subject of his junior paper and thesis.

The freeganism movement advocates an alternative way of living by boycotting the traditional economic system. The word “freegan” is a combination of “free” and “vegan.” Not all freegans are vegan, but the two movements share similar values. Freegans attempt to limit resource consumption as much as possible, with the goal of using only what they need — theoretically, a true freegan lives entirely off what others have deemed waste. Common freegan practices include dumpster diving for food and other materials, using eco-friendly transportation and “squatting” in abandoned buildings.

While a full freegan is hard to find, some students have engaged in freegan practices both on and off campus. Barnard is one such student, having traveled to New York City each week to observe freegan proponents and go dumpster diving as part of his thesis research.

“It’s one of those things that sound totally crazy until you’ve actually tried it and seen the scale of the waste,” Barnard said. Each night, Barnard explained, grocery stores will place bags of unsold, untouched food on the curb. He also participated in other freegan activities through bike repair shops which supply free repairs for low-income communities, food foraging tours, outreach efforts and sewing workshops.

Barnard incorporated freegan practices into his life at Princeton, though he said the University campus was not very conducive to dumpster diving. Nevertheless, he often found unsold donuts at the Wawa. He also shared his freegan experiences with his peers, once inviting his friends from the marching band to his room for a full meal made out of “dumpster dived” items. The spread included enchiladas and other food found in New York City.

“I expected five people to show up,” he said. “At Princeton, most students don’t need to eat food from the trash, so I thought people might not be into it.”

Instead, a group of around 25 students attended, and Barnard later took a few interested friends dumpster diving with him in New York.

Barnard emphasized that finding free things is not the essence of freeganism. He noted that students on the free food listserv or those who pick up discarded furniture outside dorms each spring are not, in fact, practicing freeganism — even if they are essentially scavenging for leftover resources.

“People have been eating free food and taking free furniture forever,” he explained. “What makes it ‘freegan’ is an explicitly political attempt to use waste to point out the flaws of our current consumer society and to try to construct alternatives to that.” As such, taking free food and used furniture would only be freegan practices if they were done for reasons other than to save money.

The CycLab, the University bike cooperative, is one organization that may or may not fit into freegan values, depending on the meaning attached.

CycLab mechanic Ben Siegfried ’12 said that while the CycLab does use parts from donated or discarded bikes, it does so mostly out of convenience or necessity. The primary goal of the CycLab is to service the community, with the next goal being sustainability, according to Siegfried.

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“We are trying to promote a fossil fuel-less mode of transportation while conserving and reusing as many resources as we can,” Siegfried said. He noted, however, that the lab buys tools from suppliers when necessary.

While Siegfried does not see the CycLab’s services as within the freegan ethos, he said other people may feel different, as there is “a lot of overlap between trying to use sustainable power generation and freeganism.”