[Scpg] in the Land of the Freegans + the Home of the Phat

[seedmind at usa.net]

"Freegans" forage for food in bins

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http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-05-26T143622Z_01_L23490302_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-FREEGANS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
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By Kate Kelland
Fri May 26, 2006 


LONDON (Reuters) - Ross and Ash are about to dig in to a meal of chicken rogan
josh, king prawn makhani and rice, chicken balti and naan bread followed by
pineapple, strawberries and grapes for dessert.

All of which came out of a bin.

"Everything I eat comes from dumpsters," Ash says. "For me it's a logical
lifestyle choice. It's such a natural thing to use up that waste."

Some call them "dumpster divers," others brand them "skip lickers," but Ross
Parry and Ash Falkingham like to count themselves among the Freegans -- a
growing band of foragers who seek to live entirely from the waste of others.

In this brief trip to a small supermarket skip in southeast London, they have
recovered enough food to provide themselves -- and several others -- with an
impressive evening meal, as well as bread, muffins and teabags for the next
morning's breakfast.

Freeganism, derived from the words "free" and "vegan," is spreading to Britain
from the United States, where one of its founding fathers, Adam Weissman, has
set up a Freegan information Web site to persuade others to join him.

"TOTAL BOYCOTT"

Weissman describes Freeganism as "a total boycott of an economic system where
the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations."

"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,"
he explains on the site.

Falkingham, a 21-year-old Australian, sees Freeganism as a way of forcing the
world to wake up to what it is wasting.

"Nine million people die every year of starvation ... and while that's
happening, we are literally destroying food," he says.

There are no exact figures for how many people are choosing to live a Freegan
lifestyle in Britain. Despite the name, not all those who opt to live this way
are strictly vegan.

Falkingham and Parry, who is 46, have been roaming Britain since last October,
pursuing their Freegan lifestyle in cities from Manchester and Leeds in the
north, to Plymouth in the south.

They eat, sleep and live in a beaten-up old van which is equipped with
mattresses, a stove, a sink, carpets and even a heater all taken from skips or
wreckers' yards.

Falkingham wears a watch recovered from a bin behind a charity shop, his boots
were taken from a retailer's skip and the pair say they have found computer
parts, furniture and even an MP3 player in dumpsters.

They have no jobs and no money but see very little need for either.

"When you first start off, you think 'how am I going to live without a
wage?'," says Parry, who has been living a Freegan lifestyle for more than 20
years.

"But our priority is to work for love to make the world a better place, and we
want to have more time to do that. The less time we spend chasing a salary,
the more time we have to do what we really believe in."

"There's so much excess in this society that you don't have to worry about
where the next meal is coming from."

MILLIONS OF TONNES OF WASTED FOOD

According to research, more than 30 percent of the 17 million tonnes of waste
that goes to landfill in Britain is food waste.

Fareshare, a charity which delivers surplus food to the homeless and other
vulnerable people in need, says around a quarter of that is perfectly good,
edible food.

"Last year we redistributed 2,000 tonnes of food -- that helped provide 3.3
million meals and helped around 12,000 people -- but that is still just the
tip of the iceberg," Fareshare spokeswoman Maria Kortbech Olesen told
Reuters.

Fareshare, which distributes food given by some of Britain's biggest food
retailers such as Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's which would otherwise go
to waste, sympathizes with Freegans, but is concerned at their sometimes risky
methods.

"What they are trying to address is basically the same thing as we are," says
Kortbech Olesen. "There is a lot of waste and we have to do something about
it."

"But you have to be careful. Freegans take food from bins, and they can never
know whether that food is safe."

Falkingham shrugs off any concern about getting sick.

"I think I have only once been ill from eating food from bins -- I got
diarrhea," he says. "But I like to push the limits with what I eat."




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