Post Punk Kitchen Forum

And what about this pragmatic angle:

If enough people are freegan (and maybe it would take an awful lot of people to equal "enough" in this scenario), they'd be creating or at least justifying waste. Imagine that I am a bakery and I constantly toss excess/waste baked goods. Every time I do this, an army of freegans comes and picks over my dumpster. My trash fees are kept low because I'm not feeling the negative consequences of all my wastefulness. I don't need the dumpster people to come empty my dumpsters as often as I would have to, if my waste was left alone. I keep on filling up the dumpster day in and day out, because I have less incentive to buy and prepare the right amount of food. The freegans are exploiting and even influencing my wastefulness. In which case, they're participating in the conditions that lead to my wastefulness.

Or not.

I just like talking.

i'm too lazy to make a thorough, cogent argument, but i'd advocate for buying vegan goods as a better means of effecting broader change in markets impacted by supply and demand. freeganing, in market terms, is an effectively neutral act--within the supply chain, no one knows what you've done, so it doesn't increase or decrease demand for the items you've taken. but increased sales of vegan goods, even if they're quite modest, can move the market in that direction, and that seems like a win no matter what your underlying motivation for being vegan or wanting vegan products. if you're a consumer in a modern industrialized nation, there's no way to have zero impact. but you can choose what kind of impact you want to have.

i do understand the dilemma that arises when your desire to advocate for the environment generally comes up against your desire to live a (traditionally) vegan lifestyle. it's not an issue with me when it comes to food, but i have inner debates about whether it's better for me to buy a new cotton jacket or a used wool one, or new manmade-material shoes that might last a year or two vs. leather ones off ebay that might last a decade. in the end i almost always go with a secondhand purchase instead of something new and let the material take a back seat in the decision-making process, because my primary motivation with nonfood items is to reduce material consumption. and some people will say that means i shouldn't declare myself vegan, and i can't really debate that. but when i can't buy something used, i buy it vegan, because i want to vote with my dollars in that way. every decision i make involves thought about what systems it will impact beyond just the purchase, and i try to do the most holistically good thing. and i understand, weltengreif, that that's what you're trying to do, too. i'm just not certain that what you're suggesting is really it. with clothing, if we can keep the market for secondhand items strong, it creates a strong motivation for people to avoid discarding things that could be reused. with food, once it's written off and dumpstered, it's essentially disappeared from the market. i know that when you don't make a purchase, that impacts the economy, but it won't ever create a shift in the types of products that economy offers its consumers. i do believe that devoting more agricultural resources to plant production (of any kind) over raising livestock would be good for the environment, so i'll pay more for something vegan and organic and non-gmo, because at least then the store knows i want it and will continue to stock it, which means someone somewhere will continue to think it's worth dedicating land resources to it.

eta: footface's argument above is related to this, but i'm ignoring it, because it was posted while i was writing and i'm exhausted from all this thinking.

And freeganism has been brought up a couple times here so that can also be where we have some of our preconceptions. I think in our discussions in the past, things do get muddled and where do you cross the line. If you are at a party, do you eat what is served? A catering event? If there is no available vegan food and you eat whatever is available, what incentive is there for the caterer/host to prepare vegan food?

Also, where do you draw the line. You mention eggs/milk but what about meat? What about road kill?

Wasted food is a shame and I don't know of anyone here who has switched from vegan to freegan but I can understand if someone goes that route.

I could be wrong, but I don't think most businesses are fans of dumpster divers. I know some are friendlier than others, but I don't think it's a party for them to imagine all the people waiting until night time to jump into their dumpsters, to eat their expired food all on their property. Not that a freegan is the lawsuity type, but if they were...

I emboldened the winners in each of these competitions below.

but what about freegan mothra vs. the terminator while the terminator is wearing plaid bondage pants?

I'm kind of with H-dog? I think?

If vegans are the primary consumer herbivorous types, who have a smaller impact by getting their sunlight energy as directly as digestion allows, then freegans are the scavenger cleaner types who have a smaller impact by consuming only what nobody else is eating. Which is good, but I assume that if carnivores suddenly stopped wasting their deer carcasses and leaving organs lying around, the scavengers would just end up either resorting to killing their own deer or living on berries and tubers. (Well, okay, assuming they're capable of being omnivorous, I guess.) Like, an anti-capitalist freegan might start raising their own chickens when society miraculously starts producing zero waste, but an environmentalist one would probably go vegan.

So freegans fill in a niche like detritus-eating crabs, which is totally cool by me. I mean, I'd rather you were a scavenger than a top-of-the-chain predator, if you have the choice to be one or the other.

Apologies if my metaphor sucks.

I would like to interject here to say that this phrase has totally made my evening.

...and before anyone gets huffy, not because of any bias either way. I just like the phrase "detritus-eating crabs." I could use some of those around the house.

i loved this whole thing. this was very well-said and i agree 100%.

As far as what I've come to understand about freeganism, it doesn't all involve just dumpster-diving. I don't think the ideal has every been that all food thrown away gets picked out of the trash and eaten. I think the idea is that food gets "passed" down a chain to the point where it never gets wasted. (But maybe I'm wrong because that still very much involves capitalism).

So for example, a grocery store has overstock and sells it cheap to a restaurant, the restaurant has leftover food, donates it to a food bank, the food bank spreads it around to as many people as possible. and any leftover scraps gets composted. But many places just toss things because either they don't care or because its a legal issue (someone gets sick and sues).

So maybe, for Footface, this can add some complexty to your arguments?

If you think it would be good for restaurants to give away (rather than throw away) their leftovers, does that make you a freegan? Does anyone think it's better to trash it? Are we all freegans?

Not unless you actually eat them.

Isn't it all a legal issue? I don't think most places want to throw out perfectly good food just because they're soulless, they've got money to think of too. I was under the impression that food had to be thrown out - and not just given away - because of FDA rulsies.

That's kinda what I understood too. However, when I worked at Starbucks in Texas and California, SOME would throw out their pastries, and some would give them away. Which is strange because you would think Starbucks of all companies would have a blanket policy to try to cover their asparagi.

Also, supermarkets constantly donate their old bread. So maybe there is a difference between donating produce or cooked food vs. packaged food? Or restaurants vs supermarkets?

Okay, here's what I found on the laws, but that's all I'm going to say since I don't want to get too far off topic:



http://farmplate.com/blog/?p=3196

So, basically, restaurants and supermarkets are scared of being sued.

I thought the good samaritan law was more secure than this. That's too bad.

What if the monkeys were paid a fair wage, with health care benefits?

I don't have a ton to add to the discussion, but as a new vegan and newly freeg-curious person, I have been thinking about these topics myself lately, so this has been an edifying discussion for me. Not everyone is an ethically conscious veteran.

I suppose, for me, part of the argument boils down to am I boycotting the purchase of animal products or am I taking a personal vow of non-consumption? If I am boycotting the purchase of animal products in order to lessen demand, then I suppose eating processed food of dubious composition scavenged from a dumpster is ethical, if not vegan. I haven't increased demand. But by eating those products, am I making some sort of statement to my omni-friends that veganism isn't possible or isn't desirable? It's so terrible that I'm digging in dumpsters for a dairy fix?

Personally, I might eat dumpstered vegetarian food that didn't obviously contain animal ingredients. But I would find an asiago bagel or carton of eggs repugnant enough on an emotional level that I wouldn't want to eat them. I wouldn't want to eat meat no matter the source.

my friend mikey is vegan at home, never cooks for himself using animal products, but is vegetarian otherwise, if other people make food that has eggs or something in it. so i guess he's a freegan that way, but he never goes dumpster-diving.

i don't know what this adds to the discussion.

It has been many years since I worked at a grocery store. The bakery policy then was that we were supposed to rip open any bags of bread that we threw out at night so they could not be dumpstered. If we saw any people in the dumpsters, we were supposed to call a manager. This was years before dumpster diving became 'popular' if you will, and the people we had taking food out of the trash really needed it.
I know it is a bit different now and a lot of places do donate to shelters and whatnot. The last bakery I was at did this with certain things, but we still threw a lot away. I imagine there are very few places where the management is excited that their food is being taken from the trash and not wasted. Employees, sure, but less so any management.

I think for many vegans, this type of "political" thinking might not be foremost in their minds. Often it's as simple as "I object to everything about this 'food' and I refuse to participate in its production or consumption." As opposed to "If I refuse to eat this, that will tend to have an effect on demand, which will..."

The following is all off the top of my head, without judgment (and if so, not personal against individuals, just hypothetical against people's choices) and only looking at this as a thought exercise. It all could be very wrong, considering my privilege.

According to my cursory research, "freeganism" entails:

dumpster diving
plate scraping
wild foraging
gardening
theft
employee scams
barter

I find dumpster diving and plate scraping in of themselves neither ethical nor unethical, no more than taking a magazine out of a wastebasket or a newspaper off a diner table to read. Someone else used the word "neutral," and I have to agree. What I do find unethical is being a parent and feeding a child unsanitary food from a garbage bin or someone else's plate. While some may argue that a homeless parent feeding their children from trash would be better than the alternative of no food, I dispute the idea that "no food" is the only alternative (food banks? even begging for money and spending it on cheap food?), and I have questions about the decision process that convinced a homeless parent to bring their child into homelessness instead of finding other caretakers or doing what was necessary to keep them from being homeless in the first place (I understand the possibility there may be extreme circumstances which make homelessness totally unavoidable, but I don't agree that the scenario is probable). I also think that there may be "freegans" who are privileged and don't need to dumpster dive, and therefore are making food more scarce for legitimately needy people.

I have no issue with wild foraging, gardening, or barter, and those may in fact be more ethical choices than pure consumerism. One would not grow animal products in a garden, obviously, and I don't see the need to barter for non-vegan food. Wild foraging for animal products - that's just "hunting," isn't it?

Theft and employee scams are inherently unethical, at least within my paradigm. The classic "man stealing loaf of bread for hungry family" scenario, I maintain, is not the only alternative to "no food," and not the most ethical.

Based on the above, no, I don't find freeganism more ethical than veganism. This is as written by a person who has been privileged for all his life, though found himself temporarily homeless at one point in his life (and I am well aware that my privilege helped me rectify that situation easier than others who find themselves homeless but without the same privilege I have experienced).

Do more research! Dumpstered food is usually either food in sealed packaging (like crackers) or that can be peeled (like bananas). And I don't think most people in this thread are talking about food for street people or the homeless. That changes the conversation entirely.

Oh my. I don't think many people choose to become homeless with their kids (or without). shiitake happens. Not everyone has a better alternative.