Freegans: Sifting through garbage, rebels against waste plan their dinner menu

[LynneSin]

At first I thought this was pretty gross but the lifestyle is kinda interesting to say the least

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070926/LIFE/709260318/1005/LIFE

Sifting through garbage, rebels against waste plan their dinner menu
By ERIKA HAYASAK, Los Angeles Times


"Freegans" take a trash tour in New York. Deirdre Rennert (left) said she once took home a salmon carcass and made ceviche.

Los Angeles Times/CAROLYN COLE
NEW YORK -- For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery store.

Nelson is a former corporate executive who can afford to dine at upscale restaurants. But she prefers turning garbage into gourmet meals, without spending a cent.

On this afternoon, she thawed a slab of pâté that she found three days before its expiration date in a dumpster outside a health food store. She made buttery chicken soup from another health food store's hot buffet leftovers, which she salvaged before they were tossed into the garbage.

Nelson, 51, who once earned a six-figure income as director of communications at Barnes and Noble, quit in 2005 and became a "freegan" -- the word combining "vegan" and "free" -- a growing subculture of people who live off consumer waste. Though many of its pioneers are vegans, people who neither eat nor use any animal-based products, the concept has caught on with Nelson and other meat-eaters who do not want to depend on businesses that they believe waste resources, harm the environment or allow unfair labor practices.