I used to live next door to the back alley of a member of a big chain grocery store. Where the trash bins are.

It became obvious pretty quickly that the dead stuff was only dead by caveat. If you catch it fast, you’ve gotten it for free.

It’s funny how that changes your head, recognizing that you’re a trashpicker.

Dumpster diving with purpose: Grand Rapids Freegans make political statement by searching through trash

May 16
Grand Rapids, Michigan

The small Grand Rapids group began online in October. About 30 people have joined, and five or six actually meet up to go diving. They have started to keep tabs on stores that don’t have compactors or locked bins, and have come to learn which will yield the most food.

Members meet at 10 p.m., wearing gloves, old shoes and clothing they don’t mind getting dirty. From there, they pile into one or two cars, stopping periodically to check trash bins. Afterward, they spread their finds on the ground and the goods are divided based on what everyone wants or needs.

“It’s focused around community more than anything else,” said Marie, a college student and the group’s founder, who asked that her last name be withheld because of the questionable legality of Dumpster diving.

This is about Freegans. This is their NYC meet-up site:

Sustainable living beyond capitalism

Do you want to reduce your consumer impact on the earth, humans, and animals? Are you concerned about the wastefulness of our consumer society? Learn how to find useable goods in the refuse of our throw-away culture, to identify wild edibles, to repair and rebuild bikes, clothing and more.

Independent Lens: Garbage Dreams

by Cynthia Fuchs

April 26, 2010

“I once went into Cairo to collect trash. I realized everyone was well dressed and I wasn’t, so I was a bit upset.” As 17-year-old Adham describes his revelation, he appears determined and self-aware, gazing calmly and intently into the camera. He is zabaleen, one of 60,000 impoverished Coptic Christians who live in Mokattam, outside Cairo: they have collected the city’s trash for 150 years. Adham is hardly content with his fate. Over low angle images of streets and trucks and piles of waste, he observes, “There’s the upper class, the middle class.” Adham takes a breath, then adds. “The nothing class: that’s us.”

The fate of the nothing class is the focus of Garbage Dreams, Mai Iskander’s remarkable first documentary, airing 27 April as part of PBS’ Independent Lens series. Following Adham and two other teens over four years, the film shows not only how they live, but also how they see themselves, their dissatisfaction as well as their ingenuity. Introduced as he’s counting and cutting cans to recycle, Adham seeks an alternative. At the same time, 16-year-old Osama can’t quite break into the garbage business; in fact, he’s having trouble holding any job for long, he admits, and the film shows him arriving late and suffering the complaints of his family (“He’s an irresponsible failure”). Working in a restaurant kitchen, he recalls his father’s warning, that “Garbage work is dangerous work.” Osama prefers washing dishes, he says, “because it isn’t hard like other jobs. Other jobs make my eyes pop out.”

Husby Experiences Dumpster Diving for a Meal

The Evangelical Covenant Church

ESSEX JUNCTION, VT (May 20, 2010) – Covenant World Relief Director Dave Husby fell on such hard times, he was eating cold pizza and French fries out of a dumpster.

Fortunately for Husby, those days were only one night – during a C.A.R.E dinner (Community Awareness Reflection Experience) at Covenant Community Church. Sixty people attended the event and were served by 20 people. At least some of the guests were, anyway.

The guests – who included three state legislators – sat at tables of 10 and drew strips of paper from hats that told them their fate. A lucky few were served a first-class meal and received five-star table service. Most of the others were part of the “middle class” and ate accordingly.

One person at each table pulled out the strip and had to eat what they found in the dumpster. The pizza and fries were packed in bags that were then retrieved from the dumpster.

Saving the World by Eating out of the Bin?

ABC News
May 21
Natascha Wank

(long piece about trashpicking in Germany)

It’s shortly after midnight on a Saturday in Mainz and a good time to swing by the local Rewe supermarket for a look.

Carring (sic) a backpack, Alex (whose name has been changed for the article), a 24-year-old biology student, is on his way to the store. The night is cold and the stars are shining.

Alex is a dumpster diver: Someone who doesn’t walk through the front entrance to the supermarket, but whose patch of turf is out back where the trash cans are kept. Their hauls can include salad with wilted leaves, dried-out bread or cookies in damaged packages — everything that shoppers inside the supermarket would no longer buy.

Busk Break: Gorgeous Doom’s Dumpster-Diving Ditty

May 14
Mountain Xpress
Steve Shanafelt

New Orleans-based band Gorgeous Doom have been busking downtown in advance of their performance at BoBo Gallery on Monday, May 17. We were lucky enough to catch the trio version of the group trying out some new material across the street from Pritchard Park. This song doesn’t appear to have a title yet, but we do know the basic theme. According to banjo-playing singer Josh Cole, the song is about “eating out of the dumpster.”

You can watch this at the link.

CU Bans Dumpster Diving University Police Say ‘Divers’ Confronting Students A Major Issue

Russell Haythorn
May 10
Boulder
ABC7 News

BOULDER, Colo. — This is the time of year when college students start moving out for the summer, leaving behind an array of junk, or in some eyes, treasures, ranging from clothes, to lamps, to furniture. There’s even an occasional computer left behind.

But police at CU Boulder have a warning before you “dive” into that Dumpster: do it, and face a fine of up to $1,000.

Police say it’s no longer acceptable to rummage through someone else’s trash. That’s because there were so many Dumpster divers on campus last year, some students were actually afraid to go outside and throw stuff away.

Police also had a problem with non-students starting Dumpster fires.

What is a trash bin? How do we define that lately?

Well, big metal structure lined with filth. That works for starters.

Into which employees put things that have become defined as useless.

Food that was salable five minutes previously. Advertising displays that aren’t doing the job any more.

Shabby this, shabby that. And food.

Lots of food.

Masses of pasta delights, inundated with cheap vegetable oil. Out of date fried chicken, just recently.

Peppers drying out. Potatoes with sprouts.

And meat. But that tends to be dealt with otherwise. The rendering truck gets that.

It’s a fine art, being a trashpicker. Yeah, lots of bacteria in the vicinity. The best bins are ones you can watch.

Back when I lived by the trash bins, people would line up in the alley for up to 45 minutes, waiting, like so many hungry stray dogs. Waiting for the delivery.

Those Freegans are right in saying you should have rules. You should be polite, and you should not throw stuff around. You definitely should not intimidate the deliverers.

But it can get rough, it did sometimes, even in our little town here. I did know a guy who set teh Dumpster on fire once. He had problems. And the delivery was late.

Now he’s late. So it goes.

I think it is so weird that there is trash, that anything is trash. What terrible planning on all of our parts, that such a concept exists. Not to mention that it exists to the point where people make an entire living out of trashpicking, and have these fearful relationships with the people who throw away the “trash.” Something badly wrong there.