A wasteful life

Are freegans oddballs or sages? Raina Kelley spent a month living as one to find out

Before June, I thought only the sad and desperate ate garbage. Then I discovered the freegans — (free + vegan). A freegan is a person who has decided to boycott capitalist society by severely curtailing consumption of resources through reusing, recycling. Taking the expression “Waste not, want not” to its extreme conclusion, freegans try not to purchase anything up to and including food. Instead, they rely on bartering and what the rest of us leave for the garbageman.

An innocent idea was born. I would live as a freegan for a month. I had nine rules: I would be a vegan who bought nothing but local and/or organic food. I would use only ecofriendly transportation, cut my electricity bill in half, erase my carbon footprint . That’s tough work for an eBay-loving, omnivorous, cigarette-smoking shopaholic. But I would transform myself into an eco-princess — a green goddess. That’s not exactly what happened.

Day 1: I want a Diet Coke. I am craving sugar. Sometimes a 75-cent packet of Skittles is all that prevents a co-worker from getting slapped. I see waste everywhere. I feel guilty about everything — doing my laundry, leaving my computer on at night, relaxing in the shower, BUYING FOOD AT THE GROCERY STORE. How can absolutely everything I’ve been taught to do to survive be wrong?

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Day 2: Caught in the rain, unable to buy an umbrella and late for work. Not a good start. I whine. Lesson #1: People don’t want to hear about your moral superiority or the difficulty of a choice you made voluntarily.

Day 3: I watched a freegan “trash tour”. You would be surprised at what freegans find in the garbage. I saw trash bags full of bagels so fresh that when they were opened, the air filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread. I also saw canned goods and even toilet paper among the rubbish.

Days 4-6: Who knew you could gather wild parsnips, bay leaves and sorrel for your dinner in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park?

Day 8: Who has time to forage after a hard day’s work? Why do I have to make sacrifices for this planet? Don’t let anyone tell you going green is easy. It’s not. It is hard work. There are just so many things to do — pack my organic lunch, unplug all my chargers, turn off my computer and put scraps in the compost.

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Day 14: I hate being a vegan. I feel like I’m starving to death out of guilt over being at the top of the food chain. I’ve lost 12 pounds and have lots of energy. So what? Oh, and it is impossible to compost in a house with three cats.

Days 24-26: My poor husband was nearly strangled when he put a non-organic lemon in my iced tea. We are getting a little testy with each other. Some people say meat makes you aggressive. But meat’s got nothing on deprivation. Being a freegan is lonely. I didn’t want to hang out with my freegan mentors because I feel like a pretender. And I don’t want to see my friends — I don’t want to be a killjoy.

Day 31: I expected to go flying back into the arms of my local Target. I can’t. I know, I whined a lot. But we can’t deny that our planet is warming. I think I’ll try moderation. I’d like to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And with the twelve hundred dollars I saved, I can now retire two weeks earlier than I planned. Recycle, reuse, renew? You bet. Shopping in the trash? Sorry, can’t do it.

-RAINA KELLEY Newsweek