Freeganism (wiki)

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NonZeroSum
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Freeganism (wiki)

Post by NonZeroSum »

_________ Advice Page __________


Introduction [1]

Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food.[1] The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan".[2] While vegans might avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general. Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with "dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting abandoned buildings, and "guerilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.[3]

Table of Contents

1 Facts & Information
1.1 History of the term and movement
1.1.1 Freegan News and Events

1.2 How to
1.3 Stigma
1.4 Critique

2 Activism
2.1 Effective Activism
2.2 Virtue Activism
2.3 Policy
2.3.1 Impacts

3 Alternative Perspectives

_____________________________

Facts & Information

History of the term and movement [2]

Freegans' goal of reduced participation in capitalism and tactics of recovering wasted goods shares elements with the Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s that organized free housing and clinics and gave away rescued food.[4] The word "freegan" itself was allegedly invented in 1994 by Keith McHenry, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs—an anarchist group that distributes free vegetarian meals as a protest against militarism and as a way of providing "solidarity not charity"—to refer to vegans who eat animal products if they find them in a dumpster.[1] McHenry's account is consistent with other published accounts of freeganism that show the word as beginning to be used in the mid-1990s by participants in the antiglobalization and radical environmental movements.[5]

The pamphlet "Why Freegan?"—written by former Against Me! drummer Warren Oakes in Gainesville, Florida in 1999[6]—defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating" and goes on to describe practices including dumpster diving, plate scraping, wild foraging, gardening, theft, employee scams, and barter as alternatives to paying for food.[7] The pamphlet also expanded the activities associated with "freeganism" with a long section on non-alimentary practices, including conserving water, pre-cycling, reusing goods, and using solar energy. More than just a set of behaviors, though, the pamphlet presents freeganism as having an overarching political goal: an "ultimate boycott" of "all the corporations, all the stores, all the pesticides, all the land and resources wasted, the capitalist system, the all-oppressive dollar, the wage slavery, the whole burrito" in favor of "liv[ing] a full satisfying life...while treading lightly on the earth." The first organized group of self-described "freegans" formed in 2003 as an offshoot of the Wetlands Preserve nightclub and associated Activism Center in New York City. According to the group freegan.info, "After years of trying to boycott products from unethical corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn’t just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself."[8] From 2005, freegan.info organized regular events including sewing and bicycle workshops, wild food foraging expeditions, and "trash tours"—public dumpster dives open to the public and to media.[9]

Other self-described freegan groups have, at one time or another, existed in United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, France, Canada, Greece, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan, and Brazil, as well as a half-dozen U.S. cities. The majority of these groups are now inactive, however, and many people and organizations engaged in freegan activities do not use the label.

Freegan News and Events [3][edit]


How to[edit]

Trashwiki [4] is the go to that every freegan uses for maps and information on big cities when they don't know their way around or have someone to show them. Helplful 'last checked' dates also.


Stigma [5] [edit]

research on freegans finds that individuals come from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds and have high levels of education (even if their present lifestyles make them low-income).

I am extremely embarrassed for people to see me diving, because I can tell that I’m not just me, I’m also a representation of black people in general...I got harassed by security several times while diving on my own campus, until my white friends pop their heads out of the dumpsters.


Critique

Drop out culture.

_________________________

Activism

Effective Activism

Virtue Activism

Public groups have been contacted by journalists and celebrity campaigners to come along and collect footage, we can do better to document ourselves, seek above board access to food waste, network and make companies aware of how to better stock and shelf their products to reduce waist.

Until better laws can be enacted dumpster diving can be a vital toolkit in cheaply running new projects, supporting the homeless and feeding domestic animals which are obligate carnivores.

Policy

Stop Wasting Food [5] Hugh's Fish Fight [6] Hugh's War on Waste [7]

Impacts [8][edit]

Media coverage of freeganism in the United States peaked around the financial crisis in 2007-2009 and dropped off subsequently. More recently, freeganism has been discussed in the context of increasing public interest in food waste. Tristram Stuart, a prominent food waste campaigner and founder of the organization "Feedback" claims that media attention to freeganism was crucial in attracting attention to the problem.[1] Other analyses of the origins of contemporary public policy initiatives around food waste have also concluded that freeganism contributed to new initiatives, like the French law on food waste or the U.S. food waste reduction challenge.[42][43]

__________________________

Alternative Perspectives


________________________




_________ Talk Page ___________

How it relates to veganism, how pragmatic it can be when done right, how the end goal should be bringing awareness to end food waste, but also how it can be a vital toolkit in cheaply running new projects, supporting the homeless and domestic animals which are obligate carnivores.

Wiki quoting

Hard to do much better than the wiki definition, history and policy impact. And if we could wouldn't we want to change the Wikipedia definition also? In such a circumstance is it ok to copy verbatim or should we keep in quote and reference form?

Not sure if this is how other small mediawiki operations do it, but seems we can copy verbatim without quote-marking:[1]

As of July 15, 2009 Wikipedia has moved to a dual-licensing system that supersedes the previous GFDL only licensing. In short, this means that text licensed under the GFDL only can no longer be imported to Wikipedia, retroactive to 1 November 2008. Additionally, Wikipedia text might or might not now be exportable under the GFDL depending on whether or not any content was added and not removed since July 15 2009. See Wikipedia:Licensing update for further information.

Verbatim copying under the GFDL is one of the ways to reuse Wikipedia articles and other material. You may only use this approach for pages that do not incorporate text that is exclusively available under CC-BY-SA or a CC-BY-SA-compatible license. See Re-use of text under the GNU Free Documentation License.

For the purposes of this discussion, Wikipedia is considered to be a Collection of Documents. (An alternative interpretation could be that Wikipedia is a single Document, which invalidates the discussion on this page.)


To Draw from

Forum Threads


Hyperlinks [2]
How Much Food Can You Find In A Dumpster? (Vegan Gains)
Vegan makes profit from roadkill
Is it okay to eat meat that you did not buy?
Part Vegan Part Freegan? The concept of use?
Eggs and Veganism
Backyard rescue hens
Veganism and Dumpster Diving
FREEGAN VEGAN BEEGAN’S!?


External links

Wikipedia [3]

Very thorough, we can probably reference to their history overview. --NonZeroSum (talk) 06:29, 15 July 2017 (CEST)


Trashwiki [4]

This site is the go to that every freegan uses for maps and information on big cities when they don't know their way around or have someone to show them. Helplful 'last checked' dates also. Interesting recorded Freegan News and Events also.[5]
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
User avatar
NonZeroSum
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Re: Freeganism (wiki)

Post by NonZeroSum »

Freeganism

Freegan derives from a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan".

In the simplest and most practical sense, freeganism expresses the morally neutral to positive quality of rescuing food waste (or other waste) even if those items are not themselves vegan foods.

Bread with whey in it, for example, might not be vegan if you were to buy it (which in part funds animal agriculture), but if it were salvaged and the alternative was for it to go in a landfill, it is freegan because no money from its purchase went to funding animal agriculture.

That's not what it means for everybody, though. Freeganism is complicated by various ideological and political differences within the movement. There are, for example, less mainstream anti-capitalist sentiments flowing through much of the movement's origin:
Freeganism is a practice and ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food.[1] The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan".[2] While vegans might avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general. Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with "dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting abandoned buildings, and "guerilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.[3]
This is certainly more extreme than a mainstream applicable form of freeganism. This article primarily deals with what might be termed "freegan-lite" or a less politicized version of freeganism which is compatible with vegan consumerism as a supplement vs. the more hard-core political freegan ideology which is full-time and extends beyond vegan issues.

While a radical anti-purchasing mindset could have environmental benefits in some cases (as negative waste; see the benefits in Zero Waste), doing this for all food and goods is probably not practicable for most people, and some associated practices like abstaining from gainful employment and theft may even be harmful (see criticism of extreme associated practices).


Contents

1 Facts & Information
1.1 History of the term and movement
2 How to Talk to Food sellers
3 How to Dumpster Dive
3.1 Health & Safety
3.1.1 Disclaimer
3.2 The Dumpster Diving Code
3.2.1 Rule 1: Dumpster discretely
3.2.2 Rule 2: Leave things better than how you found them
3.2.3 Rule 3: Check the legal status in your country
3.3 What can you find while dumpster diving?
3.4 What gear do you need to dumpster dive?
3.5 The Best Places to Dumpster Dive
3.6 When Should you go Diving?
3.7 How to Pick Good Dumpster Food
3.7.1 Labels
3.8 Resources
3.9 Stigma
4 How to Table surf
4.1 Disclaimer
4.2 Options
5 Critique
6 Activism
6.1 Effective Activism
6.2 Virtue Activism
6.2.1 Networking
6.2.2 Freecycling
6.2.3 Street food
6.2.4 Pay as you feel Shops, Cafes and Restaurants
6.2.5 Advocacy
6.2.6 Word Usage
6.3 Policy
6.3.1 Impacts


Facts & Information


History of the term and movement
Freegans' goal of reduced participation in capitalism and tactics of recovering wasted goods shares elements with the Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s that organized free housing and clinics and gave away rescued food.[4] The word "freegan" itself was allegedly invented in 1994 by Keith McHenry, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs—an anarchist group that distributes free vegetarian meals as a protest against militarism and as a way of providing "solidarity not charity"—to refer to vegans who eat animal products if they find them in a dumpster.[5] McHenry's account is consistent with other published accounts of freeganism that show the word as beginning to be used in the mid-1990s by participants in the antiglobalization and radical environmental movements.[6]

The pamphlet "Why Freegan?"—written by former Against Me! drummer Warren Oakes in Gainesville, Florida in 1999[7]—defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating" and goes on to describe practices including dumpster diving, plate scraping, wild foraging, gardening, theft, employee scams, and barter as alternatives to paying for food.[8] The pamphlet also expanded the activities associated with "freeganism" with a long section on non-alimentary practices, including conserving water, pre-cycling, reusing goods, and using solar energy. More than just a set of behaviors, though, the pamphlet presents freeganism as having an overarching political goal: an "ultimate boycott" of "all the corporations, all the stores, all the pesticides, all the land and resources wasted, the capitalist system, the all-oppressive dollar, the wage slavery, the whole burrito" in favor of "liv[ing] a full satisfying life...while treading lightly on the earth." The first organized group of self-described "freegans" formed in 2003 as an offshoot of the Wetlands Preserve nightclub and associated Activism Center in New York City. According to the group freegan.info, "After years of trying to boycott products from unethical corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn’t just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself."[9] From 2005, freegan.info organized regular events including sewing and bicycle workshops, wild food foraging expeditions, and "trash tours"—public dumpster dives open to the public and to media.[10]

Other self-described freegan groups have, at one time or another, existed in United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, France, Canada, Greece, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan, and Brazil, as well as a half-dozen U.S. cities. The majority of these groups are now inactive, however, and many people and organizations engaged in freegan activities do not use the label.

Freecycling

In large towns often an informal exchange of waste goes on with signs on sidewalks saying free stuff, the internet just allows this to reach a larger audience, often dumpster divers will take good finds home they don't need and put them online for others to benefit from.


Foraging


Disclaimer: Have an easily identifiable plant or mushroom you're searching for with no known similar poisonous varieties you could misidentify it with. The best academics at the top of their field can still misidentify foraged material and have died from not taking proper precautions. Leave the general wild food books alone until you've been taken out in the field by experts and done a lot more studying.

Enjoyable leisure and study activity. A way to get involved with your community, making old orchards productive again, donating to food charities.

We are desperately in need of industrializing wild food like they do in Asia with Sea-Buckthorn, a vitamin and mineral super food, it's roots a sea wall stabilizer, which we literally just slash and burn here. Also supporting important food sources grown abroad like monkey puzzle tree nuts that I think yield the highest fat and protein of any plant grown per square meter. Also the miracle fruit as a replacement for sugar that turns everything you eat sweet for around half an hour.
  • Abundance [11]

Edible Gardening
Some freegans participate in "guerrilla" or "community" gardens, with the stated aim of rebuilding community and reclaiming the capacity to grow one's own food. In order to fertilize those guerrilla gardens, food obtained from dumpster diving is sometimes also reused, and some use vermiculture instead of ordinary composting techniques in order to keep the required infrastructure small and adapted to urban areas. Some rural freegans are also "homesteaders" who also raise their own livestock, grow their own food, and employ alternative energy sources to provide energy for their homesteads, occasionally living "off the grid" entirely.[19]

Gleaning

Building a relationship with farmers, to not spray and till up to the corner of their field to help hedgerow wildlife, and have pickers come and collect the goods for charity. Bringing awareness to supermarket and consumer practices discouraging 'wonky' veg.
  • The Society of St. Andrew [12]
  • The Gleaning Network [13]

How to Talk to Food sellers

Building up a relationship with small shop bakers, butchers, market stalls sellers...


How to Dumpster Dive

Health & Safety

Disclaimer

Getting food from dumpsters isn’t the most sanitary thing you can do, so don’t do it if you are immunocompromised through youth, illness or old age, if you don’t want to risk infections, and are germ or pest phobic and/or nutritionally deficient.

Be careful when climbing in and out of dumpsters. You’ll need a bright head-torch to see what you’re doing, even better is to have a friend holding another torch to advise you where you’re not looking. Hard toed rubber boots, hard gloves to protect your hands and long protective trouser legs and sleeves to protect against sharp objects and residue on your skin, also make sure the jacket zips off in the middle so you’re not taking it off over your head.

Remove all exterior clothing before travelling home and shower straight away, alternatively removable car seat covers, trash sacks, or sheets of newspaper will protect your car seat. Clean plastic trash sacks are a good way to protect your finds while wading in the dumpster, transporting your haul home, and when containing messy boots or clothes. When biking, line your panniers or backpack with plastic bags.

You still need to check labels and use all 5 senses when deciding what to bring home. The most nutritious food is that picked and eaten or processed to be eaten on the same day it ripens (retting, processing and cooking to make those nutrients more accessible aside), when dumpster diving for food, you should expect most of the products you find to have declined somewhat in quality.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, food poisoning is twice as likely in restaurants than at home. There is some research on higher levels of cases of gastroenteritis among dumpster divers in the US, though it is not obvious how it is comparable to other activities.

Best trick in the book is to leave all your products submerged in a bucket of water with vinegar or diluted bleach overnight to soak which kills most aerobic bacteria. Anything bulging, bloated or smells funny leave behind.


The Dumpster Diving Code

Out of respect to other dumpster divers and the owner of the premises there is few simple rules you can adhere to keep everyone happy.
If you fail to adhere to the code, you risk having the owner of the dumpster lock the bin, pour bleach on the food or wait for you to return and shout at you for being a dirty hippie. None of that is fun, so read carefully.

Rule 1: Dumpster discretely
You don’t want to draw attention to yourself while you are dumpstering. People might get spooked and call the cops, or you might get shooed away. Keep noise to an absolute minimum. Speak with an inside voice, don’t throw things around and avoid knocking things over loudly. go during the cover of night if you can.

Rule 2: Leave things better than how you found them
Dumpster diving can be messy, smelly business, but you’ve no right to go mess up someone’s garbage area. Avoid tearing bags open, tossing trash on the floor or leaving bags outside the dumpster. If you do need to tear the bags, make sure you tie them back up. Not only is it rude to leave an area messy, you might attract raccoons and other pests, creating a problem for the innocent dumpster owner. Breaking this rule is a huge motivation for owners to lock their dumpsters, preventing future generations of divers to benefit from the cornucopia of food.

Rule 3: Check the legal status in your country

Dumpster diving is legal in the United States and Canada except where prohibited by local regulation.

However, if a dumpster is against a building or inside a fenced enclosure marked “No Trespassing,” you could be questioned, ticketed or even arrested by the police. If the officer responding takes a particular dislike to you they may even try to ticket or arrest you for breach of the peace or disorderly conduct, two charges so abstract there is nothing you can really do but keep a calm conduct, just be aware.


What can you find while dumpster diving?

The focus of this page is on meeting your food needs mostly free and easily on a freegan-vegan diet, but just because you can find other products in dumpsters cheaply in thrift stores (and the back of!) or online classifieds, doesn’t mean you can’t also find almost anything and everything you need in dumpsters, including:

Clothing, furniture, electronics, building materials, books, pet food and supplies, and so much more…


What gear do you need to dumpster dive?
Dumpster diving is a messy business.

You’ll want to ensure that you are well-equipped for the job so that the task is as pleasant as possible.

Long sleeve shirts and pants. I recommend that you equip yourself with a long sleeve shirt and pants. There is a risk that you might splash something nasty on yourself, and it’s better that it should end up on your clothing than your skin. What’s more, long sleeves and pants will protect you from any sharp objects and keep you warm.

A headlamp. If possible, you want to go dumpster diving during the cover of night to avoid detection and drawing attention to yourself. A headlamp is essential for freeing your hands for maximum flexibility and digging. Don’t assume the light of streetlamps will not be sufficient to give you the required visibility for optimum diving.

Thick gloves. You’ll want some gloves for protection and warmth. Getting your hands covered in trash water is unsettling, and also, will get your hands freezing, especially if you are dumpstering at night. Gloves will also protect you from sharp edges, glass and other dumpster hazards.

A face mask. This is optional, but helpful for novices. Even though a large portion of the food retrieved from dumpster is fresh, rot may have settled into a some. If you’ve got a strong sense of smell, a mask can help you stay strong in the light of unpleasant odors.

Close-toe shoes. Leave your dandy sandals at home. Get yourself a sturdy pair of shoes to take with you diving. This will help you jump and walk over the dumpster and its content.
Bags. To take home your haul.
Backpack, shopping trolley, bicycle, car or van.
To help carry your enormous, delicious haul.
A small box cutter knife or scissors.
Helpful for cutting into bags and boxes to view the insides.
You can purchase a universal skip key for dirt cheap which will open many (if not most) dumpsters. I’ve heard tails of freegans covertly bumping chain locks and replacing the broken link with an identical quick release link or practicing their picking technique on yale locks, as well as not so covertly, highly illegal, going to war with the management escalating to electric saws until they threw in the towel.


The Best Places to Dumpster Dive


Whilst you're still getting the lay of the land a good bike and set of paniers is fastest for nipping in out of lanes to see what grocery stores, restaurants, and food services are nearby and check their dumpsters when no one is outside. It may take a few days to learn when the trash pick-up day is and what time fresh food is dumped, so keep checking.
Corner stores are also excellent – these are smaller places and neither have the time or staff to effectively throw out food. If you live in a city, you’ll find a lot of success by going to downtown and checking behind and on the sides of small, corner grocery stores. Often, you can get a lot of good stuff by just skimming the top.

Remember, dumpster diving is a hunt. Don’t give up if the first few places you visit don’t have what you were looking for.
For stores closely positioned to a street, you may need to walk down to an alley and turn into it. Many cities will have compost-only bins, typically colored in a shade of green. These are perfect. They separate the food away from the non-food items, making it easy to find the grub you seek.

When Should you go Diving?
When is just as important as where.

Try to time your dumpstering adventure close to garbage day in the area you are targeting. You can easily find this information on a municipality’s website.
You can definitely find good stuff during other times, but if you want the biggest volume of things to choose from, go before or on garbage day (before the garbage is taken away, of course).

How to Pick Good Dumpster Food

In order to conserve energy and effort, follow the steps below:
Feel the outside of the bag to understand the shapes of things inside. Slightly lift the bag to get an idea of the weight. Are you feeling some boxy shapes? Is the bag lightweight? In this case, the bag may be full of empty containers and not worth the effort into opening it,
if the bag smells or looks rotten move on.


Labels
A few important points about dates, those dreaded indicators of food lifespan:

Best Before Dates: In North America, these have nothing to do with the safety of the food in question. It is an estimate placed by manufacturers as to how much time a food will remain “fresh” – that is, retain it’s best flavor and texture. Even though many stores and people will dump food that has passed its “best before” date, this date should not dissuade you from recovering food.

Sell Before Dates: These are used by stores to keep track of inventory, and give an indication of when this food should be moved off the shelf, and to the dumpster. Oftentimes, these ‘sell by’ dates may be many days before the ‘best before’ dates.

Use By Dates: These dates indicate a manufacturers estimate as too how many days a product will be safe to eat. These dates are somewhat significant. However, it’s not like a food will suddenly be edible one day before the “use by” date, and then magically become inedible the next. These dates are usually conservative for the sake of safety and as protection from litigation.

Resources

Trashwiki [11] is the go to that every freegan uses for maps and information on big cities when they don't know their way around or have someone to show them. Helplful 'last checked' dates also.


Stigma
Much like pre-owned materials, dumpster food face some illogical prejudices.

Nonetheless, food is routinely thrown out due to these reasons. It’s gotten to the point where 40% of all food created is sent to the landfill.
A large portion of the food thrown away is not dangerous or inedible, much of it has no issues at all.
Research on freegans finds that individuals come from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds and have high levels of education (even if their present lifestyles make them low-income).[12][13]
"I am extremely embarrassed for people to see me diving, because I can tell that I’m not just me, I’m also a representation of black people in general...I got harassed by security several times while diving on my own campus, until my white friends pop their heads out of the dumpsters.[14]"

Table surfing

Disclaimer

Health risk of potentially swapping saliva and pathogens with unknown persons.

Options

Stuck on a long ferry or train journey, waking up in a hotel, out at the movies or running in and out of a shopping mall and peckish for a bite, but cant justify buying poor quality food from buffets designed for over-consumption?

Do the rounds of an establishment looking for discarded food, or sit down with a book and keep an eye out for shifting tables to jump into as soon as vacated, to create a plate out of a groups left-overs.


Critique

Drop out culture...

Theft

Scams/Shoplifting – There are a slew of shady ways to score free food…always let your conscience be your guide!

Shoplifting – There is some debate over how freegan this really is because you are still creating an empty shelf that must be restocked, but it is more freegan than forking over big bucks. This is a more direct attack on the store selling the goods, not the producer (unless you hyper-boycott a product: pick something you can’t stand and consistently get it off the shelves, steal it, break it, hide it, just eliminate it and the store will eventually stop selling it) so you should consider if you are putting a ma & pa organic veggie stand out of business or just chipping away at a corporate giant.

Employee Theft – Some folks believe this to be more ethical than shoplifting because it is a trade-off: they steal your time and energy and you steal their food. If you work somewhere that sucks, hook yourself up, hook up your friends, hook up strangers, hook up your local FNB! I have heard tales of a kid who feeds a three-person household of his workplace acquisitions from the health food store. They eat damn good, too! You can also get the insider scoop and may be able to intercept food headed for the dumpster.

Returns – Example: we just dove a bunch of jars of mayonnaise. We don’t want to eat it, so we return it to the store, say we bought it and couldn’t use it/don’t want it and trade it in for cash or good food or store credit. Some stores throw away anything that is returned that costs less than $50, so you can find expensive stuff, in a package, with a receipt!


Working Less
See also: Refusal of work [18] Working less is another component of freeganism. Freegans oppose the notion of working for the sole purpose of accumulating material items. They claim that their need to work is reduced by only purchasing the basic necessities and acquiring the remainder for free from the garbage. According to freegans, not working frees up additional time for political action while avoiding tasks they see as sacrificing valuable time to "take orders from someone else, stress, boredom, monotony, and in many cases risks to physical and psychological well-being".[8] As with squatting, however, the degree of concordance between freegan ideology and practices is variable. In surveys, self-described freegans vary from reporting working only irregularly, working consistently in social justice organizations, and being employed in more conventional, "capitalist" occupations.[5]

Activism


Effective Activism

Virtue Activism


Public groups have been contacted by journalists and celebrity campaigners to come along and collect footage, we can do better to document ourselves, seek above board access to food waste, network and make companies aware of how to better stock and shelf their products to reduce waist.

Until better laws can be enacted dumpster diving can be a vital toolkit in cheaply running new projects, supporting the homeless and feeding domestic animals which are obligate carnivores.


Networking

Facebook and email groups, squats and social centers can all be great places to network information and gather food for distribution, whether cooking for the street, a benefit towards a political campaign or feeding your carnivorous companion animals.


Freecycling

In large towns often an informal exchange of waste goes on with signs on sidewalks saying free stuff, the internet just allows this to reach a larger audience, often dumpster divers will take good finds home they don't need and put them online for others to benefit from.


Street food

Food not Bombs[15]
Q5: What is the concept behind Food Not Bombs?
We recover food that would have been discarded and share it as a way of protesting war and poverty. With fifty cents of every U.S. federal tax dollar going to the military and forty percent of our food being discarded while so many people were struggling to feed their families that we could inspire the public to press for military spending to be redirected to human needs. We also reduce food waste and meet the direct need of our community by collecting discarded food, preparing vegan meals that we share with the hungry while providing literature about the need to change our society. Food Not Bombs also provides food to protesters and striking workers and organizes food relief after natural and political crisis.

Q7: By your current estimate, how many groups are there and how many countries have a practicing chapter of Food Not Bombs?
Our website lists over 500 chapters, but we believe there are many groups that have not asked to be listed. We think there are over 1,000 chapters of Food Not Bombs active in over 60 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. We are active in nearly 500 cities in the United States and have groups in another 500 cities outside the United States. We have been told that there are over 60 groups in Russia but only have 15 listed. The same is true for many other countries.

Pay as you feel Shops, Cafes and Restaurants
  • The Real Junk Food Project [16]
  • The Good Food supermarket [17]

Advocacy
  • List of films, songs, articles and blogs.[18]
  • Freegan News and Events.[19]

Word Usage

Freegan or Freegan-Vegan?...


Policy
  • Stop Wasting Food [20]
  • Hugh's Fish Fight [21]
  • Hugh's War on Waste [22]

Impacts
Media coverage of freeganism in the United States peaked around the financial crisis in 2007-2009 and dropped off subsequently. More recently, freeganism has been discussed in the context of increasing public interest in food waste. Tristram Stuart, a prominent food waste campaigner and founder of the organization "Feedback" claims that media attention to freeganism was crucial in attracting attention to the problem.[23] Other analyses of the origins of contemporary public policy initiatives around food waste have also concluded that freeganism contributed to new initiatives, like the French law on food waste or the U.S. food waste reduction challenge.[24][25]


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How it relates to veganism, how pragmatic it can be when done right, how the end goal should be bringing awareness to end food waste, but also how it can be a vital toolkit in cheaply running new projects, supporting the homeless and domestic animals which are obligate carnivores. --NonZeroSum (talk) 06:29, 15 July 2017 (CEST)


Contents

1 Wiki quoting
2 Page Layout Ideas?
3 To Draw from
3.1 Forum Threads
3.2 External sources
3.2.1 Wikipedia [3]
3.2.2 Trashwiki [4]
3.2.3 The Ultimate Guide To Dumpster Diving [6]
3.2.4 Food Waste & Freeganism (Unnatural Vegan)
3.2.4.1 Stealing
4 Wikipedia on Freeganism
4.1 Introduction [8]
4.2 History [12]
4.3 Impacts [20]
4.4 Stigma
5 The Ultimate Guide To Dumpster Diving
5.1 How to
5.1.1 Disclaimer
5.1.2 Health & Safety
5.1.3 The Dumpster Diving Code
5.1.4 What can you find while dumpster diving?
5.1.5 What gear do you need to dumpster dive?
5.1.6 The Best Places to Dumpster Dive
5.1.7 When Should you go Diving?
5.1.8 How to Pick Good Dumpster Food
5.1.8.1 Labels
5.1.9 Resources
5.2 Stigma
6 Food Waste & Freeganism (Unnatural Vegan)
6.1 Freeganism in a nutshell [29]
6.2 Fake freegans [30]

Wiki quoting

Hard to do much better than the wiki definition, history and policy impact. And if we could wouldn't we want to change the Wikipedia definition also? In such a circumstance is it ok to copy verbatim or should we keep in quote and reference form?

Introduction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism
History - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism#History
Impacts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism#Impacts

Not sure if this is how other small mediawiki operations do it, but seems we can copy verbatim without quote-marking:[1]
As of July 15, 2009 Wikipedia has moved to a dual-licensing system that supersedes the previous GFDL only licensing. In short, this means that text licensed under the GFDL only can no longer be imported to Wikipedia, retroactive to 1 November 2008. Additionally, Wikipedia text might or might not now be exportable under the GFDL depending on whether or not any content was added and not removed since July 15 2009. See Wikipedia:Licensing update for further information.

Verbatim copying under the GFDL is one of the ways to reuse Wikipedia articles and other material. You may only use this approach for pages that do not incorporate text that is exclusively available under CC-BY-SA or a CC-BY-SA-compatible license. See Re-use of text under the GNU Free Documentation License.

For the purposes of this discussion, Wikipedia is considered to be a Collection of Documents. (An alternative interpretation could be that Wikipedia is a single Document, which invalidates the discussion on this page.)

Page Layout Ideas?

Keep going with facts & information, activism and alternative perspectives? - NonZeroSum

Sounds like a good general guideline. - brimstoneSalad


To Draw from

Forum Threads

Hyperlinks [2]

How Much Food Can You Find In A Dumpster? (Vegan Gains)
Vegan makes profit from roadkill
Is it okay to eat meat that you did not buy?
Part Vegan Part Freegan? The concept of use?
Eggs and Veganism
Backyard rescue hens
Veganism and Dumpster Diving
FREEGAN VEGAN BEEGAN’S!?


External sources
BrimstoneSalad wrote:
NonZeroSum wrote:Need to change the titles of everything quoted and give them a how it relates to veganism focus to give us enough room to change without copying. I'll probably reach out to trashwiki and say they have permission to use material from this page if we can borrow back from them, as 99.99% is going to be from the same angle, just be interesting to see what they come up with and where they diverge on the anti-consumerist stuff.
It's not practical to vary copyright and permissions on a page-by-page basis. It's best to just keep their stuff minimal and in quotes if it isn't public domain, and possibly link to it as a reference for further reading.

Wikipedia [3]

Very thorough, we can probably reference to their history overview. --NonZeroSum (talk) 06:29, 15 July 2017 (CEST)

Trashwiki [4]

This site is the go to that every freegan uses for maps and information on big cities when they don't know their way around or have someone to show them. Helplful 'last checked' dates also. Interesting recorded Freegan News and Events also.[5] --NonZeroSum (talk) 06:29, 15 July 2017 (CEST)

The Ultimate Guide To Dumpster Diving [6]

As it says in the title, think this is a great go to article, just a few naturalistic fallacies didn't want to copy over, the rest in the process of rereading and drawing from in my own terminology.


Food Waste & Freeganism (Unnatural Vegan)

The first of UV's videos on food waste and the second half of this one can probably be termed moving towards zero waste not freeganism, but it's all good listening. An introduction as to how it relates to veganism and use of the term.

Still be useful as I said in the beginning to get an educational video out there on how these networks of self-supporting freegans can reduce the need to consume on things like cat food, can organize to efficiently feed people on the cheap in the street and advocate for change in industry practices and the law through documenting, media and petitioning industry, councils and politicians.

On Stealing
NonZeroSum wrote:
BrimstoneSalad wrote:
NonZeroSum wrote:Freeganism started out as anti-consumerist ethic sees stealing as hurting the bottom line of all companies, creating irregular demand and no profit, as well as taking free animal products from strangers as some kind of gift economy that is commendable, so it is something we have to fight for the definition over, or use freegan-vegan instead.
The "stealing is OK" mantra seems to be dying, probably because it's illegal and people don't want to promote that in the mainstream, but it's also ethically inconsistent (it hurts retail stores and consumers: the stores which have to restock benefiting the companies making that product because the retail store has to pay for spillage, and the consumers because most of the cost gets passed on to them as markup), I think it's worth fighting over for simplicity's sake, and making arguments against those practices as fake freeganism in the article. We could have different articles on freeganism, zero-waste, and minimalism
Hmm I just think it would be historically inaccurate to call theft fake freeganism, the founding propaganda 'Why freegan?' including theft and employee scams, also the freegan movement ethic that it's better to steal from a multi-national franchises than a small independent to survive and the desire to see them rid of out of communities by putting pressure on them so they aren't financially viable - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/apr/22/bristol-riot-police-injured

It might be appropriate to call taking food offered to you fake freeganism because of a misguided understanding of it being a free-diet like vegetarian to free..g..an, but IMO the theft thing will just have to be dissuaded in the criticism section.
Unofficial librarian of vegan and socialist movement media.
PhiloVegan Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y7jc6kh6
Vegan Video Library: https://tinyurl.com/yb3udm8x
Ishkah YouTube: https://youtube.com/Ishkah
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