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Brooklyn ‘Freegans’ Resort to Eating from the Trash

NY Post

Brooklyn hipsters have found a new way of filling their bellies that would probably turn your stomach — rummaging for and then feasting on expensive food that grocery chains toss in the trash.

“Doing this saves me hundreds of dollars a month on groceries,” said Dumpster-diving college student Ashley Fields, 23, of Bushwick, who fills her fridge each week with produce, sandwiches, coffee and even sushi that she gathers from the garbage in Manhattan.

The food they find — including prepared sushi, prepared salads and fresh bread — isn’t thrown out because it’s gone bad but because stores such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods simply can’t sell it if it’s still left on the shelf at the end of the day, say Fields and her trash-chowing pals.

So while the average New Yorker might shell out $7 for a large salad at Starbucks during the day, just hours later, Fields and a growing population of educated and working hipsters are getting the same, although leftover, salads for free.

Fields, a theater major originally from St. Louis, Mo., didn’t even get her hands dirty when she took a Post reporter on a tour-de-Dumpster of four produce chains down Third Avenue last week.

Most of the fresh, still-packaged goods were separated from other, less appetizing garbage into their own trash bags, as if Mom herself had readied a personal care package for them.

“You never know what’s going to be in these bags on any given night,” said Fields, who makes $500 to $600 a week at a theater job while going to school and has been scrounging for food since the beginning of summer.

“Like tonight, I found a bunch of great, healthy breakfast sandwiches. They’re totally fine”

Upper West Side Trader Joe’s manager Mason Bly said a lot of his store’s leftover food is donated to charities such as City Harvest, which collects unused goodies from businesses.

But for items not meeting City Harvest’s standards, the grub ends up with people like Fields.

“They dig through everything,” Bly told The Post of the Dumpster divers. “They know what they’re doing. We’ve had to change our trash-disposal policies to prevent them from doing it, but they still manage to get into everything.”

And he means everything. On Wednesday, Fields single-handedly scrounged more than $160 worth of fresh groceries from stores such as Starbucks, Gristedes and D’Agostino. Her 42-item haul included plastic-wrapped sandwiches worth $10 a pop, cookies, fruit bowls, expensive salads and even a five-pack of Izze sparkling sodas, which sell for $3.50 a bottle.

Dumpster-diving is getting popular. Thousands of New Yorkers have formed trashy groups through social Web sites such as Meetup and regularly pounce on grocers’ refuse.

Fields and her pals aren’t part of the “freegan” movement, in which environmentalists live off throwaway food as a political statement against corporate waste and big agri-business.

These Dumpster divers are just in it for cheap food.

“I’m not a freegan. It’s just a really easy way to save money on groceries,” Fields said.

“All that money is going into my pocket, and I’m actually eating pretty well.

“This generation isn’t homeless, filthy or even impoverished — just thrifty with an iron stomach,” Fields said.

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28 Comments

  • Mendy Hecht

    The Post is so far behind the times–literally. The Times covered this years ago (not that anyone cares for the Times), and I’ve actually known a Freegan for a couple of years now. As crazy as they may be, they have a good point–supermarkets actually do throw out a lot of perfectly good food because it’s “not fresh enough.”

  • ckm

    I only agree with Mendy on one point, and that is that its thrown out when its “not fresh enough”. however, in the ’60’s and ’70’s, people ate rice and beans and lived frugally and it was ok. whats wrong with working hard to get to where you are. why do they need to have “rich mans food”? Hippies used to be ok about eating rice and having frugal food. So there are the two sides to it…..

  • RS

    why don’t they GIVE that food directly to the poor. That way, they can claim it as a tax deduction and the poor get the food that would be wasted.

  • Milhouse

    #1, Exactly. There’s nothing at all new about freegans. It makes sense; if someone is throwing away perfectly good stuff (because it won’t sell), and you have a use for it, why not take it? Why let it go to waste?

  • Mendy Hecht

    Hi Milhouse,

    As a matter of fact, up here in Monsey, the Pathmark that used to be on Route 59 in the middle of town was asked to donate their “bad” fruits and veggies (all still perfectly good) to Tomchei Shabbos of New Square but the manager said it was “against policy”–so it all would regularly go to the garbage. Talk about baal tashchis.

    Conversely, the organizations and shuls in our community that do take such goods for redistribution (like all the good food and baked goods you can eat at the Shomrei Shabbos shul in Borough Park) does our community proud. We do social justice right.

  • Grocery Manager

    Many stores have programs in place to donate food that is still good, However there are many times where food don’t meet the program guidelines to maintain safety of the product that the product is pitched (for example while raw roasts & steaks will be donated ground beef breaks down faster and therefore is pitched). Stores can not just give it to the poor as in our sue happy country stores can be sued if someone gets sick from eating this product.

  • Yirmi

    When i worked for a kosher restuarant for a few years they routinely through everything out at the end of the day/ week. For sure eatig old not fresh food will result in someone getting terribly sick sooner or later. I dont think its proper to give that to poor people even if it can benifit some percent of society.

  • Thinkster

    Maybe they threw out the food because it’s contaminated with cyanide? Because it was barfed on by a sick customer? Because a rat was accidentally baked inside the loaf?

    It takes a special kind of person to rummage around in the garbage for food. May I suggest it could affect their shidduch prospects?

  • Milhouse

    I can understand why they wouldn’t donate the food to Tomchei Shabbos; doing so might reduce their sales. The people who receive free produce from Tomchei Shabbos might otherwise have gone to Parthmark and bought it, so by donating it the store would be hurting itself. Throwing it away isn’t much of a threat to sales, because most people won’t take it from the garbage, and they’re not worried about the small number of freegans, who wouldn’t have bought anyway.

    And #8 correctly points out that in our litigious society, even if common sense tells you that something is reasonably safe, and you would have no problem eating it yourself, you can’t risk giving it away if you can’t *guarantee* its safety. If you were to give it away and someone got sick, even if it had nothing to do with the food, they’d sue and claim it was from the food, and you wouldn’t be able to prove otherwise. But if you throw it away and a freegan takes it then it’s not your responsibility, even if he does get sick.

  • Milhouse

    But Mendy’s and my point is that freegans have been around for many years, so why is the Post suddenly writing about them, as if they’d never heard of such a thing?

  • shlomo

    so we need kashrut on garbage?
    problem that institution cant give this food to milhouse, not because bad will, but because it not legal. they simple can’t.
    and for home when you see exp. date it exactly last day that it possibly to sale!!!!, not for use and company intentionally shorten this period. you throw and buy new :)
    BUT what about we speak? leave this food to rats!

  • A survivor of the recession

    For the past few years the recession has hit my family income badly. Pride doesn’t allow me to turn to agencies for help but my family survives by my late night visits to dumpsters after simchas: Chassunahs, Bar Mitzvahs. Dinners…even L’chaims. We easily get a weeks worth of suppers and enough for a shabbos meal with guests! There is a way to survive until things turn around financially!

  • Just Wondering

    so you have too much pride to get food stamps but to dig in the dumpster, that doesn’t hurt your pride?

  • An answer to an old question

    Now we know what happens when you cross a human with a rat you get a freegan.

  • To #16

    You serve that food to guests??? Do you tell the guests where you got the food??? Please do not invite me for Shabbos and amke sure your children don’t share the goodies with others in school or when other children come over!!! Just thinking about it makes me feel sick….yuck!

  • #17 just wondering

    If you “must” know, I cannot get food stamps because i own my house. ALL my income (literally every cent) goes for the morgage and children’s tuition leaving NOTHING for food. I don’t want to impose on the local tzedakes (like Tomchie Shabbos v’Yom Tov – who I used to support in better times). The dumpster at a simcha easily provides a week’s food until my temporary financial situation improves.

    (Also, since you must be wondering further: Clothes are B“H holding up – as long as kids don’t get a major growth spurt; we keep the electric bills down by using only one energy saving bulb and no a/c in summer – we all have bitochon that it is very temporary and keep our spirits high. Many people are MUCH worse off than we are, so we thank Hashem for what we have – the cup IS really half full, B”H!).

  • #19 Yuck

    Our shabbos and yom tov guests always compliment on the fancy delicious pasteries and cakes we serve for dessert. They think we must spend a fortune on them! My wife blushes when they ask for the recipe for the chicken and beef. They call her a goument cook and tell her she should be a caterer!

    Kids who visit get to eat the fancy “bakery” cookies – not the cheap cookies from the grocery store!

    No one says “yuck”.

  • To #16

    After reading your comment – I don’t know if I shoild cry or laugh. I do know that I am very inspired. Wow to the human spirit! May you and your family be blessed with hatzlacha which you clearly deserve. B’suros tovos – and please share with all of us soon good news!!

  • Milhouse

    #19, I’m sure he doesn’t tell the guests, and why should he? The gemara says that the reason Hashem put Adam to sleep before he made Chava was that if he would see how she was made he would feel disgusted. And the mashal it gives is from ordinary meat, which doesn’t look so appetizing before it’s cooked (as you can see with the picture of the featherless chicken elsewhere on this site). But the finished product looks and tastes and smells delicious. So too with #16’s food from the dumpster; what the guests don’t know won’t hurt them. It’s all perfectly good and healthy and tasty, and nobody needs to know where it came from.

  • DaasTorah

    I get dumpster food all the time and regularly serve it on Shabbos to all my guests and children.

  • no more meat

    I quit because I never had the guts to ask a Rov about basar hanealan and chosom betoch chosam. These laws are pretty strict.

  • Comment 16

    #16 Your story is an inspiration and a true human interest story. It is hard to imagine that a fellow neighbor is in such great need and must resort to eating food salvaged from a dumpster. I guess we all live in our insulated bubble and pretend such things only apply to “them” – never to our own friends, relatives or the fellow sitting next to us in shul.

    I appreciate your candid responses to how you budget and manage, especially that you still manage to pay your children’s tuition even when there is no money for food. That is a true sacrifice and most comendable. I hope the sacrifice gets rewarded with true nachas from your children.

    I admire your courage and unwavering optomistic faith in the future. I wish I could financially assist you and your family but you indicate that you prefer to remain anonyomous. Instead, I extend to you good wishes and a major CHAZAK!

  • Sleepless in Crown Heights

    Since reading Comment 16 _ I have been unable to sleep. How can we sleep when we hear that another family in our midst needs to survive on food from a dumpster? How can I see the leftover food at the next l’chaim and imagine this father picking it out of the garbage? PEOPLE, HOW CAN ANYONE OF US SLEEP PEACEFULLY???

  • RIP

    To Ashley Fields,

    What kind of a moron are you anyway?? So many people are resorting to dumpster diving and you not only blew it for
    yourself but for other individuals and especially families
    that depend on the food they get for themselves and their
    families. Your ego is as big as you big mouth. Needless to
    say this was some kind of way to get noticed — why else
    would you broadcast the freegan lifestyle and the fact that
    you dumpster dive in order to save money on food!!!!