Posted on 09/14/2007 3:02:23 PM PDT by presidio9
For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster.
She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery.
Nelson, 51, is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at upscale restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals without spending a cent.
On this afternoon, she thawed a slab of pate that she found three days before its expiration date in a trash bin outside a health food store. She made buttery chicken soup from another health food store’s hot buffet leftovers, which she salvaged before they were tossed into the garbage.
Nelson once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble. Tired of representing a multimillion-dollar company, she quit in 2005 and became a “freegan” — the word combining “vegan” and “free.” It is a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste.
Although many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they think waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices.
“We’re doing something that is really socially unacceptable,” Nelson said. “Not everyone is going to do it, but we hope it leads people to push their own limits and quit spending.”
Nelson used to spend more than $100,000 a year for her food, clothes, books, transportation and a mortgage on a two-bedroom co-op in Greenwich Village. Now, she lives off savings,
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
I read this in the Houston Chronicle today ...
What a bunch of losers.
H
Great a nation of scavengers!
Dumpster diving Diva dines delectably........
My dictionary doesn’t have “freegans”. I think the word they’re looking for is “bums”.
look up geophagy.....
Doctors declare dumpster diving diva dead. Details deferred.
It’s nothing new. I know a lot of women that self medicated on anti depresants, left their husbands, kids, lost the house, all their money and live off of dumpsters.
LOL!........DOA...............
Good. That means there is an opening for director of communications at Barnes and Noble.
I don’t have a problem with it. I wouldn’t do it myself, but this really is no different than buying the meats, dairy, or breads that are marked down close to expiration dates.
>> Great a nation of scavengers!
Ironically - if the entire country were like these folks, the cheap bastards wouldn’t have anyone to mooch off of.
They think of themselves as social heroes while simultaneously piggybacking on the wealth and prosperity of those they think are “wasteful”.
H
These are the same people that are touted as having “no health insurance”.....and that they intend to MANDATE others pay for their insurance......
Let's not let alliteration go to our heads...
What’s wrong with not being wasteful?
Did you erad the article? They eat out of the trash.
I don’t judge anyone who makes a non-criminal living without dipping into my pockets.
What ticks me off is watching people in my line at the supermarket paying with their WIC cards and strolling off into a nicer car than I can afford. THAT bothers me.
People want to dumpster-diver for fun and profit, knock yourselves out.
It used to be that people who scavanged through other people’s trash were called bums. Now they’re “freegans”? How about “weirdos”?
whoops, read*
Only if they've been thrown in the trash first.
Doesn't count, you ignorant dirty freegan! Yeast is already yeasty even when new.
>> I don’t have a problem with it.
Practically speaking, neither do I - provided that the owners of the dumpsters do not object. However, I might sing a different tune if they were digging through my trash. My trash is just that, it is not a public pool of goods ... it is items that I own, and I wish to discard or destroy.
Philosophically, I have a problem with those who castigate a wasteful capitalist society while living off of the fruits of other people’s labor. Without the prosperity provided by our capitalist society, the existence of these parasites would be impossible.
H
And, oh, yes ... she’s nuts.
If they can find something tasty in the trash and prepare it in a way that doesn’t make them sick more power to them.
Why should I or anyone else care?
” I know a lot of women that self medicated on anti depresants, left their husbands, kids, lost the house, all their money and live off of dumpsters.”
You know a lot of women like that? I’m calling BS.
Pinto brains running on just methane.......freegan. Gheeeesh.
Jerry: “Was it in the garbage can?”
George: “It was just resting on top...”
Jerry: “Below the rim?”
George: “Yeah...”
Jerry: “It’s garbage.”
...Waiting for the first liability suit.....something about “well you should have locked your dumpster to keep me out of your salmonella infested garbage.”
It’s not for me, but they aren’t bums. It isn’t wrong to abhor waste and they are resourceful and self sufficient. I think we waste an obscene amount of food in this country.
Garbage in, Garbage out.
Describes their worldview as well I’ll bet.
Bum is no longer politically correct. The new terminology is: Underhoused non-employment-seeking fermented beverage consumers. Please make a note of it.
I wonder if Madeline has considered going out to pasture, grazing on dandelions and Polk salad, pooping with the cows and becoming one with Nature.
My apologies for hammering on ya yesterday. I see you have survived our slings and arrows. Welcome back to FR.
What’s wrong with being Productive?
“Did you read the article? They eat out of the trash.”
And the commerical pitch would be...
“This woman, we will call here “Helen”, was once a very successful corporate executive, with the ability to eat whatever she would like....just like you and me...now she searches for old yeats out back of the local Middle Eastern Grocery...won’t you please help, by giving the price of two Starbuck’s Latte’s a full tank of gas in your suburban and the cost of a good steak, you can help Helen to eat caviar and champagne once again..won’t you please help?”
Having worked at a pretty-well-known warehouse store, I can tell you that the amount of perfectly good stuff being thrown away is OBSCENE IMO.
Part of it I understand, particularly the foodstuffs. Stuff can only be kept on a steamer or hot tray for so long. At a point you have to toss it. Stuff has to be sold before it expires. Stuff has to be maintained at certain temperatures or you have to toss it.
Other stuff I can’t understand. Perfectly good bicycles returned because the customer “didn’t want/need” it and they’ll take a sawzall and cut it in half rather than try to re-sell or donate it or whatever.
Perfectly good patio sets, umbrellas, bed headboard/footboard, vanities, sporting goods – all perfectly good but destroyed (so it can’t be used by anyone) and tossed in the garbage compactor.
Seriously, I saw a $450 mountain bike returned due to “kickstand loose.” Forget the fact that anybody with a crescent wrench could have “repaired” it – I watched them take a sawzall and cut it in half and run over the forks/wheels with a forklift before tossing it in the compactor.
$1200 patio set that they’ll run forklift forks through and beat with a sledgehammer and get someone with a box cutter to cut up the cushions and pillows so nobody can use it.
Perfectly good, just a customer didn’t want/need so they returned it and the warehouse decided to destroy it for some reason. Something beyond obscene about that. Heck, if nothing else discount it to $800 and sell it as-is.
Nope, can't do that...
>> What’s wrong with not being wasteful?
Nothing particularly. Waste not, want not.
However - these people are not social heroes ... they’re parasites that have found a way to survive by milking the prosperity of others. Wastefulness is not a virtue ... and neither is dumpster-diving.
H
“We’re doing something that is really socially unacceptable,”
Ahhh, come on.... Diagnosis determined...diseased danish dealt death. Designer dumpster displays dead diva daily.
She thought she was better than me when she spent $100,000. a year on food and clothing. She now feels she is better than me when she spends nothing to eat and be clothed. She is plainly better than me, even if she is a little chilly around the heart to her fellow man. LOL
Needs a hurl tag...
>> My apologies for hammering on ya yesterday. I see you have survived our slings and arrows. Welcome back to FR.’
No worries. I’ve survived worse. :)
Thanks.
H
>>For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster.
She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery.
On this afternoon, she thawed a slab of pate that she found three days before its expiration date in a trash bin outside a health food store. She made buttery chicken soup from another health food store’s hot buffet leftovers, which she salvaged before they were tossed into the garbage.<<
The problem is that you don’t know the status of anything. Meat can be labeled good, but maybe it was placed on a counter and forgotten for 8 hours.
An employee may have hit those fresh carrots with the bug spray and had to throw them out.
The mushroom package may have been dumped on the filthy floor placed back into the package and thrown out.
We all throw out some food for various unseen problems and a dumpster that holds a lot of food products is a terrible environment for food or humans.
I can see the homeless accepting the risks on rare occasions, but not anyone that isn’t starving.
She should go out to pasture and learn how food is actually MADE! She needs to learn how hard the work is and mayby she’ll gain an appreciation for the blessing in her life. For a former “company executive”, she sounds like another Lib who made too much money and never had to actually work to get, or really go without. Now, she’s “playing” around for while. She’ll get tired of it and soon be looking for another job that pays her 6-figure lifestyle.
She should go out to pasture and learn how food is actually MADE! She needs to learn how hard the work is and mayby she’ll gain an appreciation for the blessing in her life. For a former “company executive”, she sounds like another Lib who made too much money and never had to actually work to get, or really go without. Now, she’s “playing” around for while. She’ll get tired of it and soon be looking for another job that pays her 6-figure lifestyle.
The article didn’t say she was an unemployed bum, it said she enjoyed recycling discarded food. Big deal. I buy stuff from Goodwill sometimes, though I can afford just about everything new.
As an owner of landfills I agree completely with you. It is amazing what gets tossed, and from what I’ve seen the past 20 years is that Wally World is the worst offender.
I know of a few guys that worked for me that outfitted their homes with the castoffs.
The dumpster diving diva is still a nut job, though.
In my house, we used to have the five second rule. In her world, it’s the five day rule.
Please. They are homeless or bums. The article said clearly that she is quite wealthy. She's hardly a parasite for recycling food.
BTW: I don't consider the homeless "bums" I see around my neighborhood to be parasites either. I do, however, work with a few parasites. They are the the product of nepotism for the most part.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.