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[sound of bags rustling on the street, fade under narration]
MARCELLE HOPKINS: On a cold March night, nine people squat around a pile of black garbage bags on the curb outside a Gramercy Park grocery store. They open several bags and lay their contents on the sidewalk.
["Oh, wow, grape tomatoes…" fade under]
HOPKINS: They stuff fresh produce, breads and packaged foods into their backpacks before tying the garbage bags back up and moving on to another store a block down Third Avenue.
["Grab what you can, guys, and clean up…" fade under]
HOPKINS: They call themselves freegans, a meld of the words free and vegan. And they're not the people you might expect to see taking food out of trash bags. Most of them have homes and jobs and could afford to buy groceries. For 28-year-old Adam Weissman, it's a lifestyle choice.
ADAM WEISSMAN: Freeganism works around the idea // that we need to replace this globalized, competition driven, profit-obsessed economy with a much more sustainable and localized use of resources. And you see that at work in the things that we do, things like going out and doing what we call urban foraging.
HOPKINS: Urban foraging is rummaging through the garbage to recover useful goods. Weissman says it's is a rebellion against the wastefulness and consumerism of American society.
WEISSMAN: A society where advertisers tell us that happiness can be found through mass consumption, that the goods that we have aren't adequate, that we need a brighter car, newer clothes, a faster computer, and where economists measure the well being of a society by economic indicators measuring growth, where the greater consumption of natural resources is seen as representing a higher quality of life.
HOPKINS: Most freegans are vegetarian or vegan and don't eat animal products. But others don't mind eating dairy or meat as long as they don't pay for it. No matter what their diets, freegans have a lot to choose from in New York City dumpsters and sidewalks.
CINDY ROSIN: You end up being so picky because you find so much stuff.
HOPKINS: Cindy Rosin is an art teacher from Rockaway, Queens.
ROSIN: I'm like, I'll wait for the organic salads because you know you'll find them. It's sad, but it's true. Oh no, that's not whole grain, I'm not going to take that.
HOPKINS: Tonight there is plenty of whole grain bread, some of it still warm. The freegans gather dozens of bags of food, everything from Kraft blue-cheese salad dressing to fat-free country corn muffins. And of course lots of fresh veggies.
["Beautiful beats, broccoli rabe, broccoli, swiss chard. All perfect vegetables that smell great…" fade under]
HOPKINS: The freegans go dumpster diving about once a week in groups of 10-30 people. New people join every week, and the veterans constantly scout out new shops and neighborhoods. Rosin says that's partly to accommodate their growing numbers and partly to respect others who take food from the garbage, not as a political statement, but out of necessity.
ROSIN: We don't want to overrun any place. We don't want to be taking food from people who are taking in the neighborhoods that we are going….Ahh, look at this lamp!
HOPKINS: Rosin stops to admire a table lamp left on the sidewalk beside a pile of garbage.
ROSIN: It's classic! It's a little boy peeing lamp.
HOPKINS: Rosin doesn't take the lamp. But she says she has gotten other things from the street like furniture, books and clothes. Indeed many New Yorkers have rescued useful goods from the garbage. But most draw the line at food, says Janet Kalish, a 43-year-old high school Spanish teacher.
KALISH: Sometimes we find passersby that are curious and ask what are you doing? And we're happy to tell them and share. Most people who pass by are not interested in taking food from the trash. But maybe a few people are - here's a passerby. Would you like some free food, sir?
HOPKINS: The man politely declines. And he is right to do so, according to Dr. Bob Gravani, a professor of food science at Cornell University. He says freeganism can be a very dangerous practice.
BOB GRAVANI: The concern is an increased risk of food-borne illness, mainly because we don't know how these products have handled, we don't know what the history of them are in terms of refrigeration, we don't know if they've been contaminated in some way. And certainly in the dumpster the situation is not sanitary.
HOPKINS: But the freegans disagree. Mike, who didn't give his last name, says he's never gotten sick from eating food from the garbage. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans, he picks through a bag of dairy products. He pulls out strawberry yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream.
MIKE: I've never had a problem eating dairy. This store in particular seems to go through their dairy pretty quickly and I take it home. Often times it's not expired. I'll look at it, smell it, usually there's not a problem. I've never felt ill or anything like that.
HOPKINS: The freegans take the normal precautions to make sure they don't get sick. They wash the produce and cook the meat and don't take anything that looks or smells bad. About once a month, the freegans host a group dinner prepared with their dumpster delicacies. Weissman says the dinner is part of the outreach they do to spread the word about freeganism.
WEISSMAN: Normally we have a flyer that we pass out while we're on the street that explains to people what we're doing and invites them to the dinner. With the idea of making it a very public, invitational thing that anyone can join and really be part of this community and see that these are perfectly good resources and just feel included in a community that is sharing goods freely and using them cooperatively.
[sound of people at the dinner party]
HOPKINS: The following night, about 30 people gather at a freegan's midtown apartment to cook, eat and socialize.
[sound of pots clanging and water running]
HOPKINS: Without a grand plan for the meal, the freegans make use of whatever they've got. Some people are making parsnip and beet soup in the kitchen, while others chop broccoli in the living room.
[sound of chopping broccoli]
MADELINE NELSON: This is part of a whole series of changes that I made in my life.
HOPKINS: Madeline Nelson is a retired Barnes & Noble executive who lives in Greenwich Village. She's been a freegan for about a year and a half.
NELSON: I started looking at the consumer economy that we're on and the cycle of spend and waste that we're on. And I was thinking that there's just no way this can continue and that I was part of the problem. I started looking for all different ways to recycle and reuse. And I started looking at food in that context.
HOPKINS: The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the country wastes 27 percent of its food, which is about 96 billion pounds a year. Nelson admits that the freegans haven't really made a dent in that number. But, she says, it's a start.
NELSON: I think what we're doing is certainly not the final answer, but I think it's at least a demonstration. It's a least a start of stopping a system that's really destructive. The final answer is of course not throwing out all this food.
HOPKINS: Much of the food that Nelson and other freegans get comes from the trash of D'Agostino Supermarkets, a family-owned chain in New York. Company president Nick D'Agostino, III, says he agrees that good food shouldn't be thrown out, but he's uncomfortable with the freegans digging through his garbage.
NICK D'AGOSTINO: Why wouldn't they want to come in through the front door and discuss with me about things that they're finding?
HOPKINS: D'Agostino is a major donor to City Harvest, a charity that rescues about 19 million pounds of excess food from restaurants, wholesalers, greenmarkets and grocery stores and delivers it to agencies that feed the hungry. D'Agostino says they throw out food that is spoiled or contaminated because it doesn't meet City Harvest's high sanitation standards. Or, he says, it's possible that his employees mistakenly dump good food that should be donated.
D'AGOSTINO: We have lots of employees and people do make mistakes at times. And if people are making mistakes, I'd love to be able to correct them - tell them they don't have to throw something out, tell them there's a better way to handle it.
HOPKINS: Freegan Adam Weissman says he'd like to take D'Agostino on a trash tour of his stores to show him just how much food is wasted. Because, Weissman says, it's not a case of a few rotten tomatoes.
Marcelle Hopkins. Columbia Radio News.