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Freegan finds and adventures thread!

3K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  theverdevegan 
#1 ·
I try to reuse as many objects as possible so I know where most of the best dumpster diving is. Let's share some of our secrets and our finds!

Krispy Kreme throws out tons of donuts that aren't expired yet. I get free boxes of unopened donuts for my vegetarian and omnivorous friends!


This is at the dollar tree, animals died for nothing because these products were thrown away.:(
 
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#2 ·
Free cleaning supplies and LED candles inside the Dollar Tree's dumpster.


I found this mirror in Tuesday Morning's dumpster:


This bookend is another Tuesday Morning find!


I found these unopened child's memory games inside the dumpster of an OfficeMax:


I found this comfy chair in a dumpster by an office building:


These greeting cards with envelopes were thrown out by an OfficeMax:
 
#7 ·
Haven't dumptser dived for years but my husband and I used to walk or drive up and down the alleys behind richer homes and find stuff like glass beer mugs, unused beautiful calendars, TV trays and stands, pictures to hang, even a popcorn maker that worked great for me for three years. I once found a pair of shoes that fit too!

I can't bring myself to pick out food from a dumpster though, but in the worst of my eating disorder I admit to throwing food away only to take it back out of the trash hours later and devour it. Until I got smart and poured cleaner over it before throwing it out. Be careful with food from the dumpster!

Many years ago I worked at a fast food joint (never again!) and it was sad the sheer amount of food thrown. We fed a few homeless people that would come by late at night during closing. We did it secretly as we weren't supposed to.
 
#8 ·
I can't bring myself to pick out food from a dumpster though, but in the worst of my eating disorder I admit to throwing food away only to take it back out of the trash hours later and devour it. Until I got smart and poured cleaner over it before throwing it out. Be careful with food from the dumpster!

Many years ago I worked at a fast food joint (never again!) and it was sad the sheer amount of food thrown. We fed a few homeless people that would come by late at night during closing. We did it secretly as we weren't supposed to.
I only eat food out of dumpsters when it is cool out. I would never eat meat or dairy from a dumpster, even when I was an omnivore! I like Krispy Kreme because the expiration is usually on the box, they throw away tons of dough and over ten boxes of sealed donuts every day. It angers me because I grew up working poor in America, which means I went hungry sometimes.

People in America go hungry and we throw so much food out. Ten people could have been fed with all the food I found last night, easily.

I hope you beat your eating disorder, you seem like a really nice person.
 
#10 ·
I forgot to mention before I run off to work, that I have tremendous guilt for all the food I personally wasted in my bulimic days when I would binge/purge and throw away massive amounts of food to avoid further bingeing. Or the times I threw food away at work that others gave me when I was anorexic (I did it when no one was looking and lied that I ate it). I still buy and hoard way more food than I need, but I think part of that is a psychological thing, a terror of ever being starving hungry again. I try not to waste and throw it away now but it's a work in progress. I would love to buy and grow only what I need. Someday. I am better with other materials, except wasting paper towels.
 
#11 · (Edited)
I had some family members a few years back who had to dumpster dive for food out of necessity. It was always amazing how much perfectly good food they found! A lot of organic produce too that was perfectly fine. My husband is definitely NOT ok with the idea of dumpster diving for food, so I don't, but I could see it saving a lot on your grocery bills if you know what your doing in terms of knowing where to find the fresh stuff and knowing what is and isn't safe to eat.

Some of our furniture came from the side of the road. Few coats of paint, reupholster it, and it's pretty nice. We live fairly minimally, so we don't deliberately go out looking for things (in stores or elsewhere) because we just don't want stuff around we don't really use/need. Like that box of air freshener, while technically usable, we'd never use something like that, same with the cards. That mirror and chair, on the other hand, I can already see how to fix those up! Re-stain those arms and re-upholster the back and seat in a durable fabric that matches your home, paint the mirror (easy!) and you'd have some nice additions to your home. I can't stand a mismatch of stuff, but being less than rich, I've refinished all our furniture to match or at leafs be complimentary because none of it (except, coincidentally, our office chair) was new. It all came from thrift stores, garage sales and the side of the road lol. Good, solid, will last forever furniture too! And once you learn the proper techniques for restoring it, well lets say I could probably make money in furniture restoration from my 'experience' lol. People 'just love how I decorate' too and wonder where I got all this great looking, solid wood furniture:D You can totally furnish a apartment or house for free or very cheap if you're willing to wait for the right finds to come around and have a little creativity to make them nice again.
 
#13 ·
Thanks for Dumpster Diving TreeHugger!! We throw so much perfectly good products away!! I once found 50 fully wrapped, still warm chick fil a sandwhiches in a boyscout camp trash. Like, WHYYY? The camp is huge, could have fed plenty of people that didn't get one over in your little corner of the camp. Comapnies claim it's a "liability" issue that they throw out so much food, but let's be real, you are probably about as likely to get sick from a few hour old, surplus burger, as you are from an incompetent worker who messes up the food. America's throw-away society truly disgusts me. I feel bad about even throwing out a little food I didn't eat, but I'd be horrified with myself if I threw out perfectly good, non tainted or expired food that someone else could have eaten. What sickens me to the core are companies or workers who pour bleach into the dumpsters to prevent "scavengers." Truly sick that they don't know or care that some people live off what is thrown away. Way to slap hungry people in the face.
 
#15 ·
I was raised with the idea of offering to others what I no longer needed, and letting others know when I needed things they may not use. The idea of buying new things was just wrong.
If our society wasn't so driven by the capitalistic notions of consumerism we would be so much happier.
Other than upholstered furniture, every plastic or wooden item in my house was either free or bought second hand, and used until broken.
 
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