Introducing Dumpster diving to your family
Sebrasky says his family has always been cutting corners to make ends meet.
Peppers from a local Dumpster fill the dish rack as the produce is washed in preparation for a feast of free food.
“We always clipped coupons to pay the bills,” he says. “That’s why they’re cool with it — they don’t have to pay for my food.”
Sebrasky says his parents were not surprised when he told them what he was doing because he has always done unconventional things.
“They were really kind of disgusted by the idea,” he says. “They never said I shouldn’t, but they were really against it.” This changed when he took some of the food home with him.
“They saw that it was good food, and they saw how much there was,” he says. “Now they both eat it. My dad always makes sandwiches out of the sourdough bread I dig out. If I ever get caught and go to court, my mom said she would hire the best lawyer to defend me.”
Chad Meyers says that when he took his best friend of four years diving for the first time, she experienced a different reaction from her upper middle-class family.
“We brought home all kinds of organic food from the Dumpster,” Meyers says. “Her dad told her we were thieves and tried to kick her out of the house. Then he told her she shouldn’t see me anymore.”
Dumpster divers are not always seen as thieves. Many stores have no formal policy on how to deal with it. Some stores do not even attempt to discourage it, although they may frown on people actually crawling inside the Dumpster, says Scott Holland, the grocery manager at the Giant Eagle in Kent.
“Basically it’s private property,” Holland says. “We don’t like people crawling in Dumpsters because of the liability issue, but some people like to get scraps for their dogs. We don’t have a problem with that.”
Using waste
Freegans are using Dumpster diving as a means for subsisting in a market-driven society, but in a sense they also are using capitalism to change capitalism and make it more just, Hoffman says. The reason stores waste food is so more people will buy food at a higher price, but if freegans use wasted food rather than buying it, they are decreasing the control of the market over society.
Michael England, a junior art education major, and Dan Coate, a brother of one of the freegans, peruse the selection of Dumpster food at a potluck in November 2004.
“The very existence of the waste is an argument that using the waste will change the market conditions because the stores waste in response to market conditions,” Hoffman says.
Peter Ghazarian, a senior English major and a housemate of Meyers and Sebrasky, asks, “Why should anyone pay for food if we can throw this much away? You don’t really understand this until you see our refrigerator.”
Meyers suggests we waste so much because the profit motive took the steering wheel and ethics took the back seat. American society cares more about money and power than the needs of the poor around the world.
Sebrasky, who lives between two Cleveland discount booksellers, decided he would see what books they threw away.
“I found Bibles, old literature, dictionaries, self-help books and trashy romance novels,” he says. “Every day they throw out books. One day the Dumpster was half-full; the next day it was completely full.”
Because the booksellers purchase used books from customers, Sebrasky decided to empty out the Dumpster of one bookstore and try to sell them to another bookstore owned by the same corporation.
“I made 25 bucks — they’re kind of stingy,” Sebrasky says with a smirk.
Later, at the same store, Sebrasky and Meyers were spotted in the Dumpster by the store manager. The store manager asked if he could help them, and Sebrasky asked if he could take anything he had gathered. The store manager said, “Absolutely not. It’s illegal,” to which Sebrasky said, “That’s really stupid.” “Well, it’s the law,” the manager replied.
“I think throwing away books is absolutely as bad as burning them,” Sebrasky says.
For these Dumpster divers, using the excesses of the economic system is a way to work toward a more just society. It’s rare when a visitor stops by their house and leaves without being fed and given a week’s worth of food. In fact, the only time it occurs is if the visitor thinks things found in a Dumpster are garbage.
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.