Free Republic

One German supermarket has found a solution for expired (but still edible) food: giving it away for free to customers. A typical German supermarket dumps food waste that's expired - but in many cases is still edible - in containers outside of its premises. But as of this year, an Edeka in Ösnabrück, Lower Saxony, has set up a special station for food that has surpassed its official expiration date or is considered too old to still sit on shelves. Any customer can stop by to pick up a variety of products, from fruits and veggies to packaged goods. "The...

‘I got £10,000-plus of food for free’: the bin diver making the most of thrown-away groceries As supermarket prices soar, some Britons are hunting out food that would otherwise go to waste. We talk to one of themTim Barratt* lives on a diet of organic steak and ethically reared £25 roast chickens, asparagus and fresh pasta costing £7 a pack. But the 22-year-old hasn’t spent any money on food – with a few exceptions such as ground coffee, spices and rice – for a year and a half. He has eaten the equivalent, he thinks, of upwards of £10,000...

In a Chicago dumpster one year ago, Angel Williams said she found a piece of pop culture history: the very first issue of Rolling Stone magazine, published in Nov. 1967 with a cover image of John Lennon from the film “How I Won the War.” “I had no idea who this guy was and so I posted it and I had so many people saying, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s John Lennon!’” Williams said. “So when I looked it up, it was worth a nice amount of money, so I kept it.” If authentic, the magazine could fetch more than $600,...

I grew up in the middle of the city in Copenhagen, but I found peace in nature. From as early as I can remember, I spent time in the woods and ocean, visiting my grandmother and other relatives on the islands of Fyn, in the Southern part of Denmark. I’d pick herbs from her garden or fish with my uncle and grandfather, the sight and scent and sounds showing me the way. As a kid, I struggled in school; the more traditional side of academia collided with my energetic, restless boyhood. But in the ever-changing forests or the icy waters...

***WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES ON LINK*** Baton Rouge, LA – As was his normal routine, a homeless man scrounged the streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the evening of April 8, 2021, looking for a promising dumpster where he might find some scraps of discarded food for his evening meal. Lifting the lid on a dumpster behind a business on Colonial Drive, he began to sort through the freshly discarded bags of trash. But instead of finding stale, discarded food, the bags of trash contained bloody gowns, napkins, plastic tubes, and other items that shocked and sickened him. The homeless man...

The idea of rummaging around in a dumpster may gross you out, but freegans -- or dumpster divers -- are only too keen to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. They have become masters in the art of getting food by salvaging it rather than buying it, a militant act that seeks to combat food waste. In a bid to cut food waste, some people have decided to delve into the dumpsters left outside major supermarkets in order to fish out any unsold foodstuffs. This ecological movement is known as "freeganism" -- a portmanteau of the terms "free"...

To be a freegan is to be a person who avoids exchanging money for food and other items — you recycle what is still good instead. To accomplish this, however, one has to be creative, maybe even nocturnal. “After the markets close, the shopkeepers put food on the sidewalk,” explains Aliza Eliazarov, who discovered this world of freeganism while on a newspaper assignment about dumpster diving. “Most of the food doesn’t even make it into the trash because people are there waiting for it.” Eliazarov, who has a degree in environmental engineering and an interest in conservation and preservation, signed...

A former U.S. ambassador is being investigated for laundering, according to papers found in a garbage container in Vienna. Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, is being investigated for money laundering, and several of his wife's bank accounts have been frozen in connection with the probe. The Justice Department investigation only became public on Sunday, when a blogger found relevant documents in a garbage container used by a state prosecutor's office in Vienna and posted them online. A day later, Austrian magazine Profil reported on the case.

Esther in her coffin at the service at which pro-life activists honored her body and her life. Orlando, FL, July 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On this past Thursday, July 21, Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, preached at a memorial service for an aborted baby girl. The child was intact and her body was retrieved after a late-term abortion. The memorial service, organized by Operation Save America, was held outside of City Hall in Orlando. “We are here because this baby was killed in the darkness, and we come to honor her in the bright light of...

The state is about to release more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's emails from her time as governor. But officials are also going to withhold another 2,415 pages the state deems privileged, personal or otherwise exempt from Alaska's disclosure laws. News organizations that requested the records include the Daily News, the Associated Press, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Individuals include Geoffrey Dunn, author of the recently published book "The Lies of Sarah Palin," and Andree McLeod of Anchorage, who has had ethics complaints against Palin dismissed by the state.

SACRAMENTO, California -- A document fished out of a California state university trash bin last week has prompted a state investigation into the university's foundation arm and its refusal to disclose details related to Sarah Palin's upcoming speech at the school. On Tuesday, California Attorney General Jerry Brown said his office would look into the finances of the California State University, Stanislaus Foundation, as well as allegations that the nonprofit organization violated public disclosure laws by keeping details of Palin's contract secret.

The last two months of the growing ACORN scandal has focused on the damning videos shot by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. In seven out of eight offices, ACORN employees attempted to aid and abet O’Keefe and Giles’ illicit “scheme” to establish a brothel for underage illegal-immigrant prostitutes from Central America. . That phase has been tabled for a future date, as I forthrightly stated last Thursday evening to Attorney General Eric Holder on FOX NEWS’ Hannity show. The next phase will be the evidentiary phase. Starting with, but not limited to an extraordinary document dump at the San Diego...

LOVEBIRDS Steven and Kathryn share a well-organised home in bustling Las Vegas. They have a neat, if compact kitchen, a furnished living area, and a bedroom complete with double bed, wardrobe and bookshelf featuring a wide selection including a Frank Sinatra biography and Spanish phrase book. And they make their money in some of the biggest casinos in the world. But their life is far from the ordinary. Because, along with hundreds of others, the couple are part of a secret community living in the dark and dirty underground flood tunnels below the famous strip. Rather than working in the...

WICHITA — A man and woman decided to give the phrase "dumpster diving" a new twist over the weekend, crawling inside one on North Waco so they could be alone. But while they were engaged in what Wichita police described as "an intimate moment," they were robbed by a man armed with a pocket knife. It all unfolded shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday in the 700 block of North Waco, police said, when the man and woman, both 44, crawled into a dumpster for privacy. A short time later, a 59-year-old man and his 64-year-old companion interrupted the couple inside...

For anyone who is hungry or eating poorly, I have a secret to share. Here is some advice for those who are hungry: My partner and I don't have enough money to eat well and neither do our friends. But we have a little secret I'd like to share with you--on one condition--you have to share the food you find with others and also use good judgment. This works best if you live in a suburb or a small city. (Those in NYC and LA might want to ignore this advice.) I live in a city of about a million...

(LifeWire) -- Madeline Nelson finds a bag of slightly bruised apples and day-old bread left in a supermarket's Dumpster too tempting to pass up. "A lot of perfectly good food is thrown away," says Nelson, a spokeswoman for Freegan.info, a New York City group that promotes "freeganism," which eschews conventional commerce in favor of a lifestyle that uses minimal resources. Freegans try not to buy things new -- not even food. Jumping into a garbage bin may sound scary, but Nelson, 52, who lives in Brooklyn, says it's no big deal. Humans, she says, are "hardwired to be foragers." For...

LONDON – The fate of the world economy hinges on what happens to house prices in America and that may not be a good thing, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday. Speaking at the Reuters headquarters in London, the former Fed chair delivered a gloomy prognosis on the state of the global economy – U.S. house prices are likely to fall further and they could drag the rest of the world with them. * * * “The critical variable in this judgement is the price of homes in the United States,” said Greenspan, who ran the U.S....

“Freegans” pursue a lifestyle based upon making use of other people’s discards. Daily activities include trolling curbsides for discarded clothes and furniture, rummaging in trash bins for discarded food and begging for hand-outs. Freegans typically live as squatters in abandoned buildings, in government-subsidized apartments, or with family and friends. Harry Bong, a self-described Freegan, waxed enthusiastic about the lifestyle. “Hey, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave,” said Bong. “We’re living the dream. We get stuff free. And you have to be a little brave to eat food from a dumpster. I’m saving the...

Homeland Security officials are being warned not to toss secret documents that could compromise transportation security into the ordinary trash after hundreds of such papers marked "sensitive" reportedly were found in a city trash container near the Orlando International Airport in Florida. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) used its most recent newsletter to tell employees not to throw away outdated materials stamped as "Sensitive Security Information" (SSI). "There have been recent news stories about a young person who went Dumpster diving near a major airport and found an airport binder that contained documents marked as [SSI]", the newsletter said.

Cynthia Powell and Stephen Vajda are unabashed Dumpster divers who get much of their weekly food from garbage cans. The two educated Berkeley, Calif., professionals - who are not hungry or otherwise in need - say they are motivated by a growing conservation movement with a mantra that wasting resources, especially food, is shameful. Powell and Vajda estimate they can save up to $100 a week by dining on day-old bread, vegetables and sometimes chocolate from commercial garbage cans. The two estimated they know at least a half dozen like-minded people in Berkeley who regularly dine out - way out....