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I have this love hate relationship with extreme environmentalists. The freegans, the compacters, the treesitters, the slow food preachers, No Impact Man, the tiny house guy, and the no plastic gal. . . they all dare me with their tales of almost superhuman feats, and I secretly envy their resolve.

I have this love hate relationship with extreme environmentalists. The freegans, the compacters, the treesitters, the slow food preachers, No Impact Man, the tiny house guy, and the no plastic gal. . . they all dare me with their tales of almost superhuman feats, and I secretly envy their resolve.

This article was not primarily about bed bugs; it was mainly about college students, and how it’s harder than ever to furnish a student apartment from things you find on the curb. The reasons given: more competition, including not just students, but from people who buy and sell used items, and also young professionals who are into the environmentally positive effects of used furniture.

We posted briefly last week about Jean Pockrus '08 being featured as a Freegan activist in CosmoGIRL magazine's September 2008 issue. Here's Pockrus's account of the experience and a discussion of her involvement in Freeganism on College OTR: Naturally, all the friends I've shown the magazine to have cracked up laughing.

Summer is here on the military base and that means many families are moving. Moving means there are great finds at the dumpster and the curb on bulk pick up day. We have been “dumpster diving” for several years and have a picked up a few tips along the way.

Here’s a creative way to make a flagman table.  You can probably find one of these signs at a junkyard or steal one from under-construction streets.  (Just don’t blame us if you get caught for stealing) Most of my work is with “trash”, and in the spirit of freegans and readymakers everywhere, I try to spend as little money as possible.

At the Nairobi Giraffe Center, it isn’t just the endangered Rothschild Giraffes that get fed, a healthy population of wort hogs lives on the reserve.  It’s a bit far from the National Park, but after catching wind of the free food scheme, the wort hogs have taken up permanent residence.  No food waste at the Center!

So the semester ended for me here at Vassar, and as all the seniors moved out of their on-campus apartments they threw out a lot food. So my friends and I did the reasonable thing for a bunch of broke students who are working on campus during the summer– we grabbed our backpacks and hit the dumpsters.

Scavengers known as ‘freegans’ are taking advantage of the massive amount of food thrown away in Britain each day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bNfUJid6vs Life in France

Being freegan never looked like such a good idea. The average American family of four produces 122 pounds of waste each month, and most of that goes straight to landfills. That total doesn’t count food wasted by farms, processors and wholesalers. It adds up to a whopping 1,464 pounds per year.