Dumpster Diving

Purposes

People dumpster dive for different purposes. For some, dumpster diving is an adventurous treasure hunt for choice items that they can use or give away. Certain artists collect items from dumpsters in order to create new and interesting art from old and discarded items. Other people regularly and systematically go through dumpsters, methodically collecting recyclable materials. Probably the most common form of dumpster diving in the United States as of 2010 was the collection of cans. Many low-income people collect and sell cans from dumpsters in order to purchase items that are not covered by a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Some poor people, often mentally-disturbed or homeless, forage in dumpsters for food, while other people derive a decent living from recuperating items from dumpsters to sell. Others glean from dumpsters to provide charitable contributions, or simply to hoard. Freegans resist society's hyperconsumerism [Page 197]by withdrawing as much as possible from money exchange and living off capitalism's waste. They protest societal norms that define consumption as good and waste as filthy.

Food

The aversion to using the waste of others is particularly strong when considering food, and the enormity of edible food discarded in dumpsters is mind-boggling. The same people who might brag to a friend about finding a particular treasure in a dumpster will often blanch at the suggestion of eating food from the same dumpster. However, for some people, dumpsters provide their primary source of nutrition. Food not Bombs is a “dis-organization” that retrieves food from the waste stream in order to prepare free meals for people. Stores discard food that is past its expiration date, and restaurants and caterers discard food that has been served. Most people do not adhere to such strict regulations in their own kitchens, so at one level people know that this food will generally not make them sick. Dumpster divers often have stories of feasts prepared from free food. They complain of a preponderance of breads and pastries, which have a shorter shelf life than canned foods and seem to be regularly overproduced.

Stories of feasts from dumpsters are paralleled by the long lists that nonfood dumpster divers produce when talking about the activity. The tone is one of disbelief, often tinged with self-righteousness, when recording items like flat screen TVs and boxed sets of china. The very new and very old hold special places in the inventory. Rural dumpster sites are sometimes called “the general store,” indexing the abundance of usable items there.

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