Smells like a bargain...

After completely stuffing myself full of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry jello and the grandest of all holiday traditions, the green bean casserole (AKA hot dish, AKA white trasherole), I sat back (or rolled back as the case may be) and found an interesting website that took me right back to my good old college days.  You see, Freegan.info embodies all things evergreen.  And by evergreen, I mean The Evergreen State College.  Yes, one of those liberal arts colleges that doesn't actually give out grades.  And yes, I had friends score some tremendous things while dumpster diving behinds the Targets and Top Foods of Olympia, Washington.  I remember a friend of mine showing me all the cool things he had scored out of dumpsters:  A brand new coffee maker, a toaster, a functioning photo printer and a pound of "fresh" pasta.  Okay, the gadgets and other stuff I understand, lots of stores just throw away their returned goods (if a box has been opened for example) or their display models.  At the Olympia Target, they seemed to make perfectly functioning appliances "unusable" by spray painting a pink "X" on them.  Well, if you don't mind having a toaster with a pink X on the side, it's a good way to get free working appliances.  However, the food I never really got.  I mean, I'm as down with reuse and recycle as much as the next guy, but dumpster food just seems like a bad idea to me (check out the "Pictures of Dumpstered Goodies" section).  Most of that stuff is barely beyond major food poisoning when it's fresh, I can't imagine what it's like after sitting in the dumpster for a few hours.

Of course, in all fairness, we had just eaten enough food to feed a whole 3rd world village for a week or maybe even a year.  And we probably will end up throwing away a bunch of leftovers that just sit in the fridge for too long.  Thanksgiving:  A time to give thanks for how priveledged we are.  After all, we can feed a small subsection of our society with our trash.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 28, 2005
  First - interesting that you posted at 10:09pm when it is only 7:24pm here on the east coast ;-)
  
  Second - looks like you're too popular - freegan.info has already exceeded bandwidth limits. :-)
  
  Third - Glad you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving - I was stuck here at work, but what goes around comes around - I'm taking almost 13 days around Christmas ;-)
  
  Best,
  
  Owen