Sunday, September 20, 2009
Eating Garbage = Better Consumption of Resources?
I watched a show on the Discovery channel recently about the weirdest things that humans eat and they described a society of people called "freegans" who for the most part do not agree with the amount of resources that are wasted in our world so they gather the majority of their food and possessions by rummaging through garbage dumpsters. I decided to do a little research on "freeganism" and found that these "freegans" forage through mainly supermarket and restaurant dumpsters keeping the edible foods and anything that can be recycled and reused. There are a few reasons why people embrace "freeganism" including environmental reasons, religious reasons, and political consciousness. Personally I think that this is a very radical solution to issue of resource consumption and eating food obtained from garbage dumpsters is just plain unsanitary no matter how thoroughly you clean it. Any thoughts?
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Haha yeah that is a little over the top. These "freegans" are just asking to get sick. Maybe if the government was able to set up a system where supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants and other eateries give away the unused food? Like day of expiration put it out on a table or in bins or something along those lines as long as its a non liability for the store or eat at your own risk sort of thing. It could be somewhat effective on lessing the amount of waste as well as feeding the homeless or us struggling college kids. I know i've seen pizza places, dunkin donuts, 711's throw away enormous amounts of perfectly good food.
ReplyDeleteI work at a pizza place back home and let me tell you...throwing away perfectly good meals happens all the time with picky eaters and wrong orders made. There should be a system set up where eateries can recycle their barely nibbled food to feed the hungry and homeless. Some say its unsanitary, but this would be a big step up from dumpster diving, which is what these 'freegans' are doing.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope these Freegans realize that any sort of publicity they get better be as much of the free variety as their diet. They would be wasting their time trying to convince anything more that a ludicrously small minority to follow their example. Now I'm not trying to be completely calous. Their hearts are in the right place but I'm wondering where their brains went.
ReplyDeleteNow as far as slightly used food goes; my work has numerous parties (parties = tons of food) over the year and all the leftovers are usually picked over by the employees before they leave for the day. After the employees got their share we bring the rest to the Troy city mission so the homeless can have a nice meal every now and then. I don't think it's hard to set up something like this the owners of these businesses just have to do a little work for a great show of generosity. It's a win/win really.