Going Green....Really, Really Green

So Eugenia discovered what exactly some employed people are looking for when they go dumpster diving in the city: food. Environmentally or green-minded people organize and go in search of freshly discarded food from restaurants that they feel is perfectly edible and terribly wasteful to have been thrown out. So what do they do? They get it for themselves and eat it. I have seen one report where a dumpster diver said he had not bought groceries in the past year or so, because he was getting plenty of nutritional, fresh produce for himself by dumpster diving. This is one means of changing our ways to help reduce waste in our cities and thus protect the environment. I'm not advocating nor discouraging it. I'm simply passing along the information to you all.

So there does happen to be a group that you can join that organizes meetups, should you share their environmental concern. Check out the group here: www.meetup.com/freegan/. If we had more time in the semester, maybe I would organize a fieldtrip for us! (If that's not quite your interest, I do recommend you do browse the site http://www.meetup.com/ anyway to see if there are some other kind of groups you may like to join and thus get to practice your English when you get together with native speakers who share your common interests.)

Check out this clip from a comedy show that parodies or pokes fun at the idea of going dumpster diving.

We did discuss other ways to reduce our carbon footprint, or our long-term effects on the environment. Here is an interesting article (<-- Click there) about a writer who tried reducing hers by making some changes. Also note that she defines the word "freegan", which is what the meet-up group mentioned above calls themselves. She makes some very interesting comments as to why she DID NOT go dumpster diving. Visit the site and download the audio interview and listen while you also read the transcript at the same time. I love this news website for this reason that you can do both with so many articles.

Watch the trailer for the documentary we mentioned in class, No Impact Man, about a man and his wife and child who made extreme changes to leave no carbon footprint for five months of their lives in New York City.