Have you ever thought about getting your food out of a trash can? Don't laugh. Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America. In fact, dumpster divers even have a trendy new name. They call themselves "freegans", and as the economy crumbles their numbers are multiplying. Many freegans consider dumpster diving to be a great way to save money on groceries. Others do it because they want to live more simply. Freegans that are concerned about the environment view dumpster diving as a great way to "recycle" and other politically-minded freegans consider dumpster diving to be a form of political protest. But whatever you want to call it, the reality is that thousands upon thousands of Americans will break out their boots, rubber gloves and flashlights and will be jumping into dumpsters looking for food once again tonight.
So is this actually legal?
In some areas, dumpster diving is considered to be legal. In other areas, dumpster divers are technically breaking trespassing laws. Although in most areas the police have so many other problems that they aren't really concerned about cracking down on dumpster divers.
One of the biggest issues facing dumpster divers is safety. Crawling around in back alleys and side streets in the middle of the night is not exactly the safest thing to do. But the lure of large amounts of free food is enough to keep some people coming back over and over again.
During the recent economic downturn, the popularity of dumpster diving has exploded. Today, there are dumpster diving [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], dumpster diving [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], and even entire organizations such as [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] that openly encourage their members to go dumpster diving.
If your family was going hungry, would you go dumpster diving?
You might be surprised at who is doing it. Dumpster diving is not just for the homeless and the unemployed anymore. A lot of people that have decent jobs have picked up on the trend.
Just check out the following example from [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]....
A programmer by day, Todd takes to the streets of North Carolina by night, digging through Dumpsters at drug stores and grocery stores all around his rural neighborhood.
"You would be simply amazed at what businesses throw out," he said. "I've only had to buy two loaves of bread all year. ... Last week I had a trunk full of cereal, cookies, chips and ramen noodles."
Todd slinks in and out of smelly places with low-light flashlights to evade rent-a-cops who will shoo him away. Most nights, his 14-year-old son comes along.
Dumpster diving has become such a prominent trend that even big television news networks are doing stories about it....
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The truth is that dumpster diving is just another sign of the times.
Food prices continue to rise and this is putting incredible stress on the budgets of average American families. We just saw another huge rise in food prices during the month of August. Just check out the following data from a recent article posted on [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]....
The index for finished consumer foods jumped 1.1 percent (13.2 percent annualized) in August, the third straight rise. Over thirty percent of the August advance can be traced to meat prices, which climbed 2.4 percent (28.8 percent annualized). Higher prices for processed poultry and eggs for fresh use also were major factors in the increase in the finished foods index.
If you are married and have a couple of children it can cost a lot of money to feed them every single month. It is not hard to understand the allure of dumpster diving for people that are having a hard time making ends meet.
Other Americans are choosing to dumpster dive because they believe that it helps them live a simpler lifestyle. There is a growing movement of people in America that are rejecting all of the "consumerism" that we see all around us.
Today, the average U.S. household has [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. We are constantly being bombarded with ads that tell us that we need more stuff in order to be happy.
Well, a lot of people have decided that is a lot of bunk and they are doing whatever they can to simplify.
Other dumpster divers are absolutely horrified by how much food is wasted in America.
It has been estimated that [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] is thrown out in the United States every single day.
Can you imagine?
We are probably the most wasteful nation on the planet. With the number of hungry people in the world, it is absolutely criminal how much food that we waste.
So in that sense, it is probably a good thing that dumpster divers are saving some of that food from the landfills and are finding positive uses for it.
But what is going to happen when the economy gets even worse and we start seeing fights over the food that has been left in dumpsters?
In my recent special report about [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], I noted that 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty. For now, the U.S. government is helping feed over 45 million Americans through the food stamp program, but what is going to happen once the social safety net starts to break?
The number of good jobs in America [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], and thousands more Americans fall into poverty every single day. Things have gotten so bad that other countries are actually making videos [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].
This country is rapidly losing confidence in our leaders and hopelessness is spreading like wildfire. Today it was revealed that Barack Obama's disapproval rating has now set a new high of [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. Not only that, [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] of the American people disapprove of the way that he is handling the economy. It turns out that they don't really think much of the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] after all.
Unfortunately, even though our economy is rapidly falling apart and most of our leaders are either deeply corrupt or completely incompetent, most Americans are still way too apathetic. If you can believe it, the American people spend a whopping [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] on Facebook.
Hopefully we can get more Americans to wake up. Hopefully we can get them to understand that they need to get active, that they need [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] and that they need to get their priorities in order.
Right now, dumpster diving is cute and fun and an interesting way to save money, but in the future there will be millions of Americans digging around in trash cans if we don't get this economy turned around.
This country is rapidly changing, and not for the better.
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Black Blade: Amazing what people toss out. Some peopleconsider it like treasure hunting. I know a few interesting types who dumpster dive and they don't seem like the "type" who would be needing to forage for food.
__________________ When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America , you get a front row seat. - George Carlin
I used to know a guy who had a nice sideline diving dumpsters. He hung around the industrial parks and scored electronic components and equipment, office equipment and furniture, metal, pipe fittings, whatever companies tossed when they moved, downsized, or changed their product lines.
He quit doing it (this was in the early 90s) because he started running into organized groups who were doing the same thing, and they'd arrive while he was diving and suggest he leave or get beaten.
The ALDI store in my AO throw out a lot of good stuff.
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Last couple days of school at the local colleges, all the kids toss out everything in their dorm rooms and apartments they can't fit in their car. Furniture to fridges, TVs, game consoles, computers, anything you can imagine. Unfortunately the word is out, there are more people driving around the campus in trucks than students!
I used to hang out w/ a fellow who raised hogs and we would go to the local groc. store and get the out of date bread and other bakery stuff from the dumpster. He raised quite a few hogs on this stuff. I never ate any of it but 90% of it was still good, sealed in packages. If I had to hell yes I would do it.
I used to hang out w/ a fellow who raised hogs and we would go to the local groc. store and get the out of date bread and other bakery stuff from the dumpster. He raised quite a few hogs on this stuff. I never ate any of it but 90% of it was still good, sealed in packages. If I had to hell yes I would do it.
Alot of pig farmers do that. It makes the hog taste like crap though. If you are sending them to market who cares, but I eat the hogs I feed. I prefer them to be corn feed just like my cattle. If you feed something garbage it tastes like garbage.
When I worked at the grocery store it was a blast throwing out old yogurt and salads. Boy we would make a mess of the dumpster chucking it against the side.
Dumpster Diving?
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