Changed your light bulbs, gone vegetarian, sold your car, but still feel like your consumer impact is intolerable? It may be time to go freegan and learn to live off the waste that others throw out. Freegans gain most of their possessions and sustenance by foraging — for clothes, for furniture, and for grocery-store food that is slightly bruised or just past its expiration but still entirely edible. And there’s plenty to choose from: the U.S. EPA estimates that some 12 percent of the 245 million tons of waste annually generated by Americans is food. With roots in the environmental-justice and anti-globalization movements, the freegan subculture has distaste for the waste, environmental harm, and labor practices that accompany the corporate world; says one member, it’s “about opting out of capitalism in any way that we can.”
