Intentional Community

Comment by Larry Chang on June 6, 2010 at 12:47pm

Interesting New York Times article on freeganism and what may soon become more prevalent.

The Freegan Establishment
By JAKE HALPERN
Published: May 31, 2010


I cruised through the West Side of Buffalo last summer with a young man named Kit who was looking to acquire a house. Kit was a 20-year-old Las Vegas native who had just arrived in Buffalo. He had the look of a mountain man fresh off the trail: his face was tanned, his brow was covered in sweat and his hair was pulled back haphazardly in a ponytail. He wore a bandanna around his neck, and his shorts and T-shirt looked as if they were his only set of clothes. He was also barefoot. Kit looked poor — destitute, even — but he was very excited about a grand, old house that he had his eye on.

“It has a beautiful backyard with a lot of blackberry bushes!” Kit told me. It was a three-story house, he explained, and the first floor alone had 1,224 square feet. Kit had researched the house online, and he knew that the place had four bedrooms, two full bathrooms and two kitchens. “It’s totally stunning,” he gushed.

The house had one other outstanding feature: It was just across the street from a convenience store, and behind the store was a Dumpster, which Kit said he hoped would provide an endless source of meals.

Kit is a freegan. He maintains that our society wastes far too much. Freeganism is a bubbling stew of various ideologies, drawing on elements of communism, radical environmentalism, a zealous do-it-yourself work ethic and an old-fashioned frugality of the sock-darning sort. Freegans are not revolutionaries. Rather, they aim to challenge the status quo by their lifestyle choices. Above all, freegans are dedicated to salvaging what others waste and — when possible — living without the use of currency. “I really dislike spending money,” Kit told me. “It doesn’t feel natural.”
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