Marko Manriquez is the founder of The Freegan Kitchen, a site that promotes cooking found food. He's been diving in dumpsters for food going on three years now.
As a result his lifestyle is both environmentally and socially responsible. I recently became aware of freeganism through a mutual friend. Then I got to interview Manriquez about how he's been off the agri-business grid since.
Kelly Abbott: When did you first become interested in the freegan lifestyle and what drew you to it?
Marko Manriquez: I've always considered myself an environmentalist (as well as a bit of cheapskate), so it was a natural fit for my lifestyle. My friends kept finding amazing things from the dumpster, including food. At first, I was apprehensive to eat any of it, taking only timid bitefuls. But, I was surprised at both how much perfectly good food was being thrown away (~14% by conservative estimates) and that no one really knew about it. And it also bothered me that most of our garbage was being literally entombed in landfills rather than composted or returned into the ecosystem. The United States is a culture of enormous consumer appetites (obviously)—we consume (and waste) so much but it never really seems to satisfy our desires. The impulse to buy our way out of anything is very strong, rarely questioned and conditioned into us perpetually from a very early age. I wanted to share this revelation with others. I created FK as a way to both satirize our consumer media bubble (how better than with a cooking show?) while at the same time empower others to alternative forms of sustainability—all the while leveraging the tools of the system to critique itself.
KA: Can you explain the art of dumpster diving? What advice might you give to beginners?
MM: It's fun and kind of a rush when you first get started and don't know what to expect—like a scavenger hunt. It's especially useful for art students or creative-minded individuals looking for raw materials to salvage into clever art projects since you find all sorts of odds and ends in the dumpster. You name it, chances are it's laying in a dumpster somewhere. College campuses and affluent neighborhoods can be goldmines for furniture, housewares, and electronics. Food is hit-or-miss in the supermarket dumpsters of these areas. Here's what I've found helpful:
Dumpster Diving Etiquette
Be quiet, discreet
Be considerate—don't leave a mess
If you find something of value that you don't need, place it aside for the next freegan
Bring a flashlight or headlamp
Organic produce is coded begining with a '9' in its PLU (Price Look-Up code), conventional food has a 4 digit PLU
A pocketknife is also helpful
Bring a bag or something to carry your loot
Gloves are nice but optional
Early morning or later in the evening is optimal
If a worker asks you to leave, don't argue, just move on to the next dumpster
If it smells/looks bad, it probably is
Thoroughly scrub your produce with a brush (and I like using baking soda too)
KA: As for food, do you ever get tired of what you find? Is there usually a variety of food? What do you do if the dumpster is empty?
MM: Not really. You can find pretty much anything you need to survive tossed by someone in the dumpster. This includes but isn't limited to: furniture, electronics, computers, monitors, vacuums, food, clothing, books, even unopened alcohol (my friends have been more lucky at this than I). Most of the furniture in my house came from the street. We like to look around college campuses (SDSU dorms especially), especially at the beginning or end of the quarter—it's a goldmine. I've personally found TVs, monitors, computers, vacuum cleaners, speakers, shelves, cookware, art, CDs, books—all in perfectly good shape and more than we can use. Most of it only needs a little repair and is soon good as new
.
KA: As for sanitary issues? How do you know you're not eating contaminated or spoiled foods? Do you have methods for securing food sanitation?
MM: It's the same whether you're inside the grocery store or out back in its dumpster—use your eyes and nose. You look for mold, rotting, and discoloration. If something smells bad you toss it. If a bag or can is bulging, you avoid it. But here's the thing: grocery stores are continually restocking and tossing out food that is technically expired (due to the expiration date) but is perfectly edible—sellable one day, labeled as garbage the next day. So, the dumpsters are continually being replenished and odds are good that you'll find plenty of bounty. Overall, by following a careful practice, I feel pretty good about the quality of food I gather and have never gotten sick or ill from it.
KA: I have to ask: Does being a freegan ever interfere with your social life or family dynamic?
MM: Never. In many ways, it probably enhances the dynamic. It's a great reason to go out dumpster-diving with a couple friends and divide and cook the bounty afterward.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Friday, October 24, 2008
Freegan tips for the frugal
When I was in college, my roommates and I didn’t think twice about picking sofas, coffee tables, and housewares out of other people’s trash. Don’t get grossed out. We always gave them a good scrubbing and disinfecting when we got home. We were definitely tried and true dumpster divers, mostly because we were too broke to buy what we needed. It’s fun to see what treasures you can find that others have discarded, and you couldn’t beat the price tag: Free.
A good friend and former roommate took it a step further. She was a freegan, meaning she didn’t pay for anything unless absolutely necessary. She would search for bags of discarded donuts and bagels in the dumpster of the local bagel shop. She would pull boxes of perfectly good, unspoiled pasta and fresh produce out of the dumpster behind the health food store three blocks from our apartment. She once salvaged a CD player from the dumpster behind an out-of-business electronics store, working except for the pause button, and reams of paper from behind a defunct office supply shop.
I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical of the salvaged food, but she gave me a sneak peak into a different lifestyle. Sure, I liked to dumpster dive, but where I saw limitations, she saw opportunity. I dumpster dove so I could have a place to sit or something to put my television on.
did it to live, so she could eat better food and work fewer hours at her minimum-wage job: freeganism reduced her expenses so much that she only had to work one or two days a week to eat, live and pay her bills. And, we lived in a relatively expensive city.
What is a freegan, exactly?
It can mean a lot of things, but the heart of freeganism is reducing or eliminating wasteful consumption and use of the world’s resources. The site freegan.info says this:
“Affluent societies produce an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash. As freegans we forage instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves.”
Yes, that means getting as much as they can out of the trash. Before you cringe, the freegan site says this:
“Despite our society’s stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, usable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model.”
Freegans and frugals have a lot of common ground. They don’t spend any money they don’t have to, and they deplore waste. Maybe it’s time for us frugal folks to think about incorporating some freegan-inspired (or freegan-light) ways into our lives. For example:
Dumpster dive: It doesn’t have to be for food. You can pick usable household items out of other people’s trash. Rental properties, college dorms at the end of Spring semester, and people who are moving are great spots for this. Or, like my friend, you could look through dumpsters behind major retailers looking for usable throwaway office supplies and housewares. I once got a really nice frying pan this way. I still use it 5 years later and it cost me nothing.
Get as much as you can for free: If you want free stuff but don’t want to dig through trash to get it, turn to Craigslist and Freecycle to fill your needs at no cost. On the flip side, post your unwanted items or discards on Craigslist or Freecycle, and keep it from going into the trash.
Intercept food before it goes into the trash: At my last office job, there was always a pot luck or a birthday cake somewhere. I noticed that half of it just ended up in the trash, so I started stashing Tupperware in my desk. After everyone was finished eating and the clean-up began, I’d ask if it was OK if I took something home and would stash it in my container. As long as you ask, most people are happy the food is going to a good home.
Swap: Get all of your friends together and host your own swap meet. Ask everyone to look in their closets and on their bookshelves for things they no longer want or need. everyone brings a box of stuff, and hopefully ends up trading it for something they need or will really use. Send any leftovers to charity. Swap parties sometimes work better the more people you have. Swap parties work really well with plants and garden items.
Recycle: Yes, that’s part of the freegan ethic and it should be part of yours too. If you are frugal and hate to waste, it’s logical to expect you not to waste, as in perfectly good recyclable paper and packaging. So please, hand over your leftovers to the recycling center. If you need more incentive consider taking your aluminum cans to the metal yard. It’ll net you a few dollars for your effort.
Go to or host a “free” market: This is just like what it sounds like: a market where all the goods and services are free. San Francisco, Flagstaff, AZ, and Carrboro and Raleigh, N.C., and Philadelphia are all home to free markets. If your city doesn’t have one, consider organizing your own. This is a variation on the personal swap meet, only on a community-wide scale.
Participate in a community garden or plant your own garden: In their effort to reduce waste, Freegans often grow their own food in community and personal gardens. What better way to save money, reduce the number of miles your produce has to travel from farm to table, than to grow it yourself? Some freegans also plant guerilla gardens, where they plant veggies or flowers on either abandoned overgrown lots or on public medians, to make use of otherwise wasted spaces.
My friend always had a few pots of seedlings on her balcony. She grew peppers, tomatoes, and one year even a few lentil plants. All were grown from free seeds of course, that she had culled from thrown-away veggies.
Dump the phantoms: Phantom loads that is. When she first moved in, my freegan friend unplugged all of the appliances, except the fridge, when weren’t using them. Phantom loads, or the energy your appliances and electronics use when they aren’t being used, really does add up to a substantial amount over time.Every dollar was precious at my house, so this just made sense.Revisit your living situation. Freegans pay as little as possible for housing. Could you reduce your housing costs, say by getting a roommate or downsizing to a smaller apartment?
This is easier for some people than others, but is worth considering. Until I got married, I always had a revolving array of friends, family, and roommates staying at my apartment. In college, we even turned our living room into an extra bedroom so we could add a summer-only roommate. It saved us $100 a month, which seemed like a fortune to us then.
The truly freegan lifestyle isn’t for everybody, but we can all learn something from freegan ways. Isn’t it time Americans stopped sending so many perfectly good items to the landfill? With the current economic crisis and many families feeling the pinch of falling home values, rising energy prices, and job loss, it may be time to revisit the idea of salvaging everything we can.
A good friend and former roommate took it a step further. She was a freegan, meaning she didn’t pay for anything unless absolutely necessary. She would search for bags of discarded donuts and bagels in the dumpster of the local bagel shop. She would pull boxes of perfectly good, unspoiled pasta and fresh produce out of the dumpster behind the health food store three blocks from our apartment. She once salvaged a CD player from the dumpster behind an out-of-business electronics store, working except for the pause button, and reams of paper from behind a defunct office supply shop.
I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical of the salvaged food, but she gave me a sneak peak into a different lifestyle. Sure, I liked to dumpster dive, but where I saw limitations, she saw opportunity. I dumpster dove so I could have a place to sit or something to put my television on.
did it to live, so she could eat better food and work fewer hours at her minimum-wage job: freeganism reduced her expenses so much that she only had to work one or two days a week to eat, live and pay her bills. And, we lived in a relatively expensive city.
What is a freegan, exactly?
It can mean a lot of things, but the heart of freeganism is reducing or eliminating wasteful consumption and use of the world’s resources. The site freegan.info says this:
“Affluent societies produce an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash. As freegans we forage instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves.”
Yes, that means getting as much as they can out of the trash. Before you cringe, the freegan site says this:
“Despite our society’s stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, usable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model.”
Freegans and frugals have a lot of common ground. They don’t spend any money they don’t have to, and they deplore waste. Maybe it’s time for us frugal folks to think about incorporating some freegan-inspired (or freegan-light) ways into our lives. For example:
Dumpster dive: It doesn’t have to be for food. You can pick usable household items out of other people’s trash. Rental properties, college dorms at the end of Spring semester, and people who are moving are great spots for this. Or, like my friend, you could look through dumpsters behind major retailers looking for usable throwaway office supplies and housewares. I once got a really nice frying pan this way. I still use it 5 years later and it cost me nothing.
Get as much as you can for free: If you want free stuff but don’t want to dig through trash to get it, turn to Craigslist and Freecycle to fill your needs at no cost. On the flip side, post your unwanted items or discards on Craigslist or Freecycle, and keep it from going into the trash.
Intercept food before it goes into the trash: At my last office job, there was always a pot luck or a birthday cake somewhere. I noticed that half of it just ended up in the trash, so I started stashing Tupperware in my desk. After everyone was finished eating and the clean-up began, I’d ask if it was OK if I took something home and would stash it in my container. As long as you ask, most people are happy the food is going to a good home.
Swap: Get all of your friends together and host your own swap meet. Ask everyone to look in their closets and on their bookshelves for things they no longer want or need. everyone brings a box of stuff, and hopefully ends up trading it for something they need or will really use. Send any leftovers to charity. Swap parties sometimes work better the more people you have. Swap parties work really well with plants and garden items.
Recycle: Yes, that’s part of the freegan ethic and it should be part of yours too. If you are frugal and hate to waste, it’s logical to expect you not to waste, as in perfectly good recyclable paper and packaging. So please, hand over your leftovers to the recycling center. If you need more incentive consider taking your aluminum cans to the metal yard. It’ll net you a few dollars for your effort.
Go to or host a “free” market: This is just like what it sounds like: a market where all the goods and services are free. San Francisco, Flagstaff, AZ, and Carrboro and Raleigh, N.C., and Philadelphia are all home to free markets. If your city doesn’t have one, consider organizing your own. This is a variation on the personal swap meet, only on a community-wide scale.
Participate in a community garden or plant your own garden: In their effort to reduce waste, Freegans often grow their own food in community and personal gardens. What better way to save money, reduce the number of miles your produce has to travel from farm to table, than to grow it yourself? Some freegans also plant guerilla gardens, where they plant veggies or flowers on either abandoned overgrown lots or on public medians, to make use of otherwise wasted spaces.
My friend always had a few pots of seedlings on her balcony. She grew peppers, tomatoes, and one year even a few lentil plants. All were grown from free seeds of course, that she had culled from thrown-away veggies.
Dump the phantoms: Phantom loads that is. When she first moved in, my freegan friend unplugged all of the appliances, except the fridge, when weren’t using them. Phantom loads, or the energy your appliances and electronics use when they aren’t being used, really does add up to a substantial amount over time.Every dollar was precious at my house, so this just made sense.Revisit your living situation. Freegans pay as little as possible for housing. Could you reduce your housing costs, say by getting a roommate or downsizing to a smaller apartment?
This is easier for some people than others, but is worth considering. Until I got married, I always had a revolving array of friends, family, and roommates staying at my apartment. In college, we even turned our living room into an extra bedroom so we could add a summer-only roommate. It saved us $100 a month, which seemed like a fortune to us then.
The truly freegan lifestyle isn’t for everybody, but we can all learn something from freegan ways. Isn’t it time Americans stopped sending so many perfectly good items to the landfill? With the current economic crisis and many families feeling the pinch of falling home values, rising energy prices, and job loss, it may be time to revisit the idea of salvaging everything we can.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
4 Easy Ways to Be a Freegan
Conventional wisdom states that dumpster-diving is for the homeless. Freegans, however, are a small anticonsumerist group who won't allow anything useful to go to waste—to the point where middle-class environmentalists can be found scavenging the trash bins of grocery stores for the still-good food thrown out every day. Some of them even chronicle their finds on the Web, boasting of spending only a few dollars on food each month and furnishing their homes for free, often to the dismay of store owners who see them as scavengers.
Thankfully, you don't have to dumpster-dive to subscribe to the freegan philosophy and reap the cost-saving benefits. Here are a few tips for accessible—and considerably less smelly—freeganism:
Need a couch, or tennis racket or tea kettle? Rather than buying a new one, check the free listings on Craigslist or Freecycle. Often, people who are moving or spring cleaning put gently used belongings on the site, free to anyone willing to trek to their place and pick it up. It's far better than the environmental effects of the manufacturing, packaging, and transport that go into a new tea kettle, and if it breaks after two months, you never paid a dime for it, so who cares? Just search the site for another one. Be wary of searching Google for offers of free stuff, though—they might come with strings attached, like making you sign up for a credit card or other promotion. It's best to stick to local sites.
Remind yourself that one man's trash is another's treasure, and check with your friends and family while doing any massive closet or garage cleanouts. If you and your friends are similar in size (or your kids are), host a party where you swap all the clothes you were going to pitch. Anything unclaimed by the end of the night goes to charity, and you'll end up with a few new outfits if you're lucky. Some of my favorite skirts once surrounded the waists of stylish friends, and my sister's favorite place to shop is my closet. The same theory goes for neighborhood-wide yard sales, where you might be able to swap a mismatched lamp for some new picture frames. You could also join a swap group, like these listed on meetup.com or on flickr. Before you go, check out our tips for effective bartering.
This tip comes courtesy of a clever coworker, who always keeps an assortment of Tupperware at her desk. Whenever there's a work happy hour or party where there will inevitably be more food than people, she makes a beeline for the Tupperware and packages up all the leftovers before they get to the garbage. This way, a veggie platter and shrimp tray become the makings of tomorrow's stir-fry dinner. I employed a similar method in college at huge university-wide picnics, where I'd stash leftover soda cans in a backpack. Intercept food before it makes its way to the trash, and you're a far cleverer freegan.
Look on the Web for free events in your city or town—a newspaper's listings or city guide will tell you where they are. If you take advantage of free concerts, street festivals, outdoor film showings, and other events, you'll pick up new interests and also have more money for paying the bills—or to put toward eco-friendly purchases, like organic products. Search a local listing, or a site like eventful.com, for the keyword free.
Thankfully, you don't have to dumpster-dive to subscribe to the freegan philosophy and reap the cost-saving benefits. Here are a few tips for accessible—and considerably less smelly—freeganism:
Need a couch, or tennis racket or tea kettle? Rather than buying a new one, check the free listings on Craigslist or Freecycle. Often, people who are moving or spring cleaning put gently used belongings on the site, free to anyone willing to trek to their place and pick it up. It's far better than the environmental effects of the manufacturing, packaging, and transport that go into a new tea kettle, and if it breaks after two months, you never paid a dime for it, so who cares? Just search the site for another one. Be wary of searching Google for offers of free stuff, though—they might come with strings attached, like making you sign up for a credit card or other promotion. It's best to stick to local sites.
Remind yourself that one man's trash is another's treasure, and check with your friends and family while doing any massive closet or garage cleanouts. If you and your friends are similar in size (or your kids are), host a party where you swap all the clothes you were going to pitch. Anything unclaimed by the end of the night goes to charity, and you'll end up with a few new outfits if you're lucky. Some of my favorite skirts once surrounded the waists of stylish friends, and my sister's favorite place to shop is my closet. The same theory goes for neighborhood-wide yard sales, where you might be able to swap a mismatched lamp for some new picture frames. You could also join a swap group, like these listed on meetup.com or on flickr. Before you go, check out our tips for effective bartering.
This tip comes courtesy of a clever coworker, who always keeps an assortment of Tupperware at her desk. Whenever there's a work happy hour or party where there will inevitably be more food than people, she makes a beeline for the Tupperware and packages up all the leftovers before they get to the garbage. This way, a veggie platter and shrimp tray become the makings of tomorrow's stir-fry dinner. I employed a similar method in college at huge university-wide picnics, where I'd stash leftover soda cans in a backpack. Intercept food before it makes its way to the trash, and you're a far cleverer freegan.
Look on the Web for free events in your city or town—a newspaper's listings or city guide will tell you where they are. If you take advantage of free concerts, street festivals, outdoor film showings, and other events, you'll pick up new interests and also have more money for paying the bills—or to put toward eco-friendly purchases, like organic products. Search a local listing, or a site like eventful.com, for the keyword free.
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