#006 Foraging Through Freeganism
Exploring Freegan Ideology
Freeganism is a widely reported, and increasingly popular philosophy, ideology and social movement. It was brought to my attention through a friend who recently appeared in a British tabloid (Daily Mail) article in the UK, where he was casually featured alongside Christmas dinner bin divers, a man promoting road kill consumption and a woman who had discovered seemingly preserved, one year old Brussels sprouts in a cupboard…What interested me were the reader comments, which as you can imagine ranged from the comedic to the insulting, and more generally reflected how freegans were being understood and perceived by Daily Mail readers.
This article lead me to read a variety of other sources, which similarly highlighted a range of opinions on the issue ranging from admiration to disgust, but in doing so it became clear that freeganism has been primarily reported on its practical level, such as how and where food is sourced, the kind of people involved and the ways it is put into action. What was missing was a deeper exploration into what freeganism really aims to achieve, in other words, not simply what freegans do and how they do it, but WHY they do it. This seemed like an area worthy of exploration.
Fortunately, freegans have created a flagship global resource online at freegan.info, which has existed for around a decade, from a base in New York City. Here it claims,
“Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources…Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic growth system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able.”
Similarly, in the about section, it states,
“We challenge the commodification of life on all fronts and work to create a world where kinship with all living beings, respect for the Earth and just, peaceful, and equitable relations between human beings replace the all-consuming drive for profit.”
The text goes on to elaborate on their various strategies for practical living which include waste reclamation & minimisation, eco-friendly transportation, rent-free housing, working less and generally ‘going green’.
Now the website clearly portrays freeganism as a political and economic ideology of sorts, but it also states it in no way speaks for all freegans and acknowledges freeganism as both a constantly evolving idea and subjective to an individual.
With this in mind, I set about investigating and came to the conclusion, there are three main reasons people choose to follow a freegan lifestyle; the first is to simply save money by finding and consuming abandoned, but still edible, food (and other items), as an alternative to buying food in the normal way. The second is to use (and help reduce) waste, produced by businesses and the third is to boycott as much as possible both money and the commodity, with a view to highlight ethical concerns and disassociate from the dominant socio-economic system - as expressed by the writers of the freegan website.
The first reason is easy to explore. We all are forced to live in a society where money, or more accurately value production, is the most important dynamic in social relations. This means it is obviously and unquestionably in our self-interest to maximise our incomings and minimise our outgoings as individuals and as businesses in any and all ways possible (within legal & subjective moral boundaries). If people can live rent-free by squatting or eat without cost by searching through rubbish, there is a clear incentive if the advantages of saving money outweigh the risks and inconveniences. The UK government fairly recently made squatting illegal, which significantly increases its risks and thus serves as an effective deterrent to freegans and others in occupying homes, rent and mortgage free. I think Freeganism’s rise in popularity is mostly due to the fact, sourcing something that is as good as the equivalent product for sale, for free, is a smart move within market capitalism, particularly when it’s something everybody needs to survive such as food.
The second reason, to use and help reduce waste is slightly more complicated. A freegan has no effect on food waste produced by supermarkets except in that they inevitably lead the supermarkets to sell slightly less than they would do if freeganism didn’t exist. This likely has negligible or no effect on how much food supermarkets order to sell and as a result, how much they don’t sell and throw away. However bin diving inevitably reduces the amount of food that goes to landfill, which is positive for the environment, although when viewed in the wider context, this again becomes negligible, as the retail industry (accurately) claims,
“Of all the food waste generated in the UK, more than 50 per cent of it comes from people’s homes. Less than 5 per cent of it is generated by the retail sector”
and,
“If a product isn’t selling as well as expected, supermarkets will take steps such as putting it on promotion or reducing the price. Retailers also offer excess stock to charities such as Fairshare for them to distribute. If food can’t be sold or charities aren’t interested in making use of it, only then will a retailer discard it. The majority of food waste is either composted or sent to an anaerobic digestion plant, where it biodegrades and can be used to produce energy. A tiny proportion of food waste created by the retail sector ends up in landfill, and efforts to reduce that continue.”
http://www.brc.org.uk/brc_news_detail.asp?id=2161&kCat=&kData=263&sCat=Retail+Myths
So an individual following freeganism to reduce waste is in reality little more than a drop in the ocean as it stands, regardless of how noble his or her motivations might be. Equally there is only so much food waste available to freegan bin divers, meaning their growth in numbers will eventually plateau, if it has not done so already. So whereas freegans can very slightly reduce landfill bound waste by bin diving, the freeganism philosophy can never reduce waste in any really significant way unless it takes new radical measures like bin diving in ordinary family bins, which brings its own problems, risks and inconveniences…
The third reason, the ultimate boycott, seems the most problematic because it asserts by removing yourself from the value exchange system as a freegan, you can somehow affect the system itself for the better, leading the way toward a ‘gift economy’ or similar.
This makes no sense, as all freegans who pursue this ideological path are doing is following an alternative lifestyle on the margins of (and from the by-products of) market capitalism. The freeganism movement only makes sense within the current system, understood by freegans themselves, and therefore cannot lead the way out of capitalism. If everyone in the world tried to follow freeganism tomorrow, as a collective boycott on all goods and services, the waste would not nearly meet demand and people would either abandon freeganism and begin to purchase again, starve and go homeless or fight amongst each other for the best free resources, goods and services. Freegans, like vultures in the wild (in the genuine rather than derogatory sense), live on what is discarded and abandoned by our system, to one extent or another, and in doing so accept the reality and live within it. Practically it is near impossible to live in the twenty-first century without using money because as a social species we depend on each other to live comfortable lives on many levels, including food & housing production and consumption. In removing themselves from value exchange, freegans are either living from others who operate in the normal way or living an exceptionally economically isolated existence, cut off from resources they invariably need. A good example of this would be the UK’s ‘moneyless man’ Mark Boyle (http://www.moneylessmanifesto.org/), who essentially took freeganism to its logical extreme, becoming an inspiration for the free movement but also, in doing so, illustrating its limitations as an agent for systemic change.
In summary, freeganism, or bin diving, is rational if the motivation is to save money as a consumer within a market capitalist system, but quickly falls down as an philosophy to either reduce ecologically harmful waste in any significant way, or to change the socio-economic system in any way at all. It can be viewed as similar to the global digital media file sharing/piracy movement in the world’s developed countries, as both the freegan and digital music downloader put their own interests to save money and access things they need and want, above the commodity seller’s need or desire to sell their goods and services (whether it be Sainsbury’s, Universal Music, directly from your favourite indie band or your local corner shop). As techniques to save people money, both freeganism and file-sharing are brilliant, but as theories or ideologies to change the world or even change business decisions and waste practices, they are flawed. They are really self-interested activities precisely because they reflect the necessary dominant values of the current system, where it is a positive thing for an individual to save money and seek advantage generally. This is not to say they are not well-intentioned ideologies, but that they may be considered more radical and political than they really are.
In concrete terms, freeganism is little more than an extension of the idea, that it is worthwhile to shop at Aldi or Lidl rather than Tesco, to obtain similar quality goods at a significantly cheaper price.
