Have you heard of this? Freeganism? I never had until today, but now I’m intrigued. Check out this article I found on HuffPost:
From the first paragraph of the article: “Freeganism is a lifestyle in which one employs “alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.” Gio Andollo is a writer, artist, musician and freegan. Andollo became a freegan when he realized that artists don’t get paid much, but he didn’t like the idea of working a “crappy, part-time job” to pay the bills. So he found another way. Andollo performs on the subway for about 20 hours a week, typically in two-hour intervals. He makes $10 to $50 per shift and has a love/hate relationship with busking. Andollo will buy food, but very rarely. The majority of his food comes from trash touring, or dumpster diving. To learn more about Gio, visit his personal blog and portfolio here, his living-on-a-shoestring-in-New-York blog here and his blog about washing dishes here.”
Interesting. Too bad he didn’t live in NYC the same time we did, or else I’m sure I would have passed him at least once on my countless subway rides.
I’m having trouble deciding if I could do this or not. Employ my skills (which ones? that i have no idea) to make enough money without having a job to keep a home and pay bills, and dig through others’ garbage to find food for my meals? Hmm, that sounds pretty haughty of me, no? For if faced with the need, I’d like to think I would do anything I had to in order to feed my family. Fortunately, I don’t have to do that right now. But it sounds like Mr. Andollo doesn’t necessarily have to go on trash tours, rather he chooses to because he doesn’t want to work a conventional job to make the money he needs for such necessities. All right, to each his own of course, as long as whatever you’re doing isn’t a detriment to the rest of us. And his backstory is pretty interesting if you check out his blog. It’s honestly one of those lifestyles about which I always think, “What if I lived like that? Would I be able to pull it off like they can?” I don’t really think it’s a lifestyle to which I’d be well-suited, though, seeing as I’m not an artist of any sort and I do enjoy getting my food from sources other than discarded trash bags, but I think it’s kind of cool how there’s a whole subset of our culture out there who lives like this. Like the complete opposite of me. And they can.
What do you think? Could you be a freegan?
Also, I feel guilty because I threw away a plastic cup today that should have been recycled. Ick.