A while back, Utne Reader ran a story about urban activists who have taken up "dumpster diving" as an act of protest against a wastefully extravagant culture. Some of them refer to their movement as "freeganism."
Pardon me while I hurl.But freeganism -- the moniker combines "free" with "veganism" -- isn't just a strategy to acquire goods without cracking open your wallet. According to the Freegan.info website, freeganism developed as a backlash against "egregious corporations" that violate human rights, devastate the environment, and abuse animals. When environmentalists realized they couldn't escape supporting these harmful actions every time they made a purchase, they decided to boycott the entire economic system.
While this is a perfectly sensible "sensitive self" approach to a problem much too big to be impacted by a bunch of middle class people diving into dumpsters, it wreaks of ego and self-involvement. How does this help the millions of people on the planet who MUST scavenge for their survival?
To their credit, Utne recently posted a story from The Montreal Mirror that looks at an exhibit of photographs from Senegal -- and other places -- that seeks to bring awareness to just how poor some people on this planet really are. It's appalling.
Here is the intro to the article:
In a disposable culture, trash is out of sight and, for the most part, out of mind. Our mountains of refuse, from plastic bags to stale food to discarded cell phones, are trucked away to dumps, hopefully far from human settlement where residents won’t be affected by the noxious stench or the toxic leachate making its way into the water supply. But for millions of people living in the developing world, these piles of garbage are a source of life and sustenance—indeed, the only one. In shantytowns the world over, generations of families scrape out a living sifting through mountains of filth to find anything that could possibly be recycled for money.Please read the rest of the article. Here are some of the pictures that appeared with the article.
French photographer Paul-Antoine Pichard spent almost a decade documenting the lives of the people known as “recycleurs.” From Dakar, Senegal, to the Philippine capital of Manila and its notorious Payatas dump, the scavengers share a single-minded pursuit: surviving the only way they can. His exhibit, Mines d’ordures (Garbage mines), will show at the TOHU until March 10.
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UPDATE: My response to comments at Zaadz:I suspected this might touch a nerve for some people. I used to feel the same way. In fact, over the last 20 years, I've owned more second hand cars, clothes, furniture, and kitchen supplies than new – by a large margin. So I applaud the recycle urge and do it myself.
I don't, however, applaud the decision “to boycott the entire economic system.” That seems, to me, like a refusal to own what we have created. Boycotting the system does nothing to help those who are being victimized by it here or abroad. This is why kids like those make me want to hurl.
I knew plenty of these people in Seattle, and strangely enough some of them really pissed me off because they didn't need to dumpster dive, so they were in essence “stealing” from those who did need to live that way.
I think there are far better ways to make a difference than to boycott that which you don't like.
I abhor the American wastefulness that creates huge landfills, in which everything is disposable, in which people are as disposable as is trash. Just because I do not think the freegans are making a real difference or doing it in a productive way does not mean I am indifferent. Far from it.
I have almost a zero carbon footprint, and the footprint I do leave is not within my power – at this time – to control. I believe that we all need to own the system that is failing, otherwise it can never be fixed – and it certainly can never be fixed by those who refuse to participate. Only those who own the system can have any power to affect change.
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