New Media Research Studio

I mean if any of you watch gossip girl, you would know that S and B tots dined with a Freegan at the Yale Dean’s reception dinner.  Boo ya.

So Shira did a great job explaining how Freeganism relates to this class, going over its connections with commons based peer-production.  For this blog I’m going to answer some of the questions Mushon had during class last week.

When we went on the trash tour we had the opportunity to talk with one of the ‘group leaders.’  In asking him questions he indicated that freeganism is a lifestyle, and the group that forages through trash together in this great city is one of the only collaborative manifestations of this anti-consumer ideology.  In thinking about this, it sort of seemed like they weren’t really trying to change the world, they were just trying to not add to the waste.  After all, their lifestyle wouldn’t really work if the rest of society didn’t throw out day old bagels.

So I’ve been researching freeganism through various news sources and have found that this is something that goes on all over the world.  I was particularly struck by one article I found from the Daily Princetonian about student Alex Barnard who did a Freegan research project in New York City during the summer.  He has since brought his dumpster diving ways back to New Jersey.

“People don’t really understand the scale at which grocery stores are wasting food and the way it’s built into their way of doing business,” Barnard explained. “Grocery stores throw out hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food every day just because slightly blemished fruit or dented cans [don't] fit into their view of perfect capitalistic abundance.”

So if you have been following our blog you probably are like me in that you think freeganism is just a response to wasting food.  But the Princeton kid brings up a good point about how this way of life will help our endangered environment in general.

“‘Changing out our light bulbs for more efficient ones is not going to solve the [environmental] problem,’ Barnard said. We have to get more radical in terms of the changes we make to our lifestyles.’”

He recommends:
“These changes, Barnard said, can include wearing old T-shirts instead of buying new ones or turning off the water tap. Any form of limiting consumption is consistent with freegan principles.

But limiting consumption is not enough, he noted, explaining that freeganism at its core is a politically motivated rejection of capitalism and the market economy.

‘Our system is broken with respect to how we treat animals, each other and the environment,’ he said.

He noted that our society eats produce ‘grown by farms that exploit workers in the third world, shipped thousands of miles using fossil fuels, put into excessive packaging and put on the shelf at a marked-up price that enriches corporate owners instead of paying workers more.’”

He has started a following among his Princeton friends, encouraging them to dumpster dive, repair old bikes, etc.

So to answer any pending questions, Freegans are trying to change the world.  They want to encourage people to live a less wasteful lifestyle.  And in response to the idea that Freegans wouldn’t survive unless society over consumerd, here’s what Barnard has to say:

“‘We as freegans choose to dumpster-dive because we try to make the best of living in a capitalist world,” Barnard said. “We want to change the world so we don’t have to dumpster-dive.’”

p.s. blockquoting wouldn’t work for me…..