Freegans Eat Street Garbage

These are people who I respect: Environmentalists who eat scavenged garbage.

"I've got yogurts!" Stephen Woloshin shouts in triumph, causing other members of his group to lift their rummaging arms and heads from the rubbish bins outside a Manhattan supermarket.

Teachers, social workers and sudents, Woloshin and his fellow scavengers are far removed from the swollen ranks of New York's homeless, belonging instead to a new faction on the fringes of the environmental movement.

As "freegans," they regard over-consumption as a pernicious global trend and seek to demonstrate how people can feed themselves for "free" on the mountains of produce discarded by others.

(I think that this exposes regular vegans as frauds, as they do not eat waste, but instead create waste by not eating other people's garbage. )

Kalish has become so adept at scavenging that the only food she still purchases in traditional fashion are the soy-based products she requires for her strictly vegetarian diet. My meals have become more diversified because I find surprises," she says. "Things I probably wouldn't buy in stores, like endives and avocado. I wash them well and I know where there's clean garbage."

And one can fight the capitalist class in the process:

"The solution to world hunger lies on the streets of New York," says Adam Weissman, the organizer behind the local chapter.

"So much food is wasted in the United States," says Weissman. "When I go to a restaurant, I bring my meal."

Can we find other areas of waste? How about apartments with more rooms than people? How about flushing the toilet more than once a day? People! Let's act!

Update: Read more about freegans here.