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<p><div type="image" title="Devising on-the-fly recipes with the produce I've salvaged has become my favorite way to cook." height="768" width="1536" msid="76306956" hostid="261"></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>As the pandemic ravages my finances, I've turned to freeganism as a way to save money and wean myself off our consumerist lifestyle.</li><li>Supermarkets <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-grocery-stores-throw-out-so-much-food-2014-10">toss out billions of tons of food</a> every year. Much of it is perfectly good.</li><li>Freeganism, or <keyword id="1591214" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="dumpster-diving">dumpster diving</keyword>, involves salvaging edible produce, baked goods, and packaged items from supermarket trash and compost bins.</li><li>In one recent dive, I scored apples, lemons, two heads of broccoli, spinach, kale, and three houseplants. In a store, that haul would've cost $100.</li><li>Cooking with rescued produce forces me to craft recipes on the fly, now my favorite way to cook.</li></ul><p>It was just another Thursday night. I had prepared dinner — one of my improvised, organic, almost-vegetarian meals — and was listening to the radio as I washed the dishes and swept the kitchen floor.</p><p>When WYNC announced it was 9 pm, I realized I was already running late.</p><p>I quickly changed into a ratty sweatshirt and a pair of well-worn leggings and laced up some ancient running shoes. I tucked my headlamp into my bag and hopped on my bike to pedal a few blocks west from my apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.</p><p>Arriving at my destination, I locked up my bike and assessed the situation.</p><p>Through the cool, late-spring air, a pyramid of oversized black trash bags reflected the beams of the streetlight overhead.</p><p>This looks promising, I thought.</p><p>I switched on my headlamp, donned a pair of sturdy work gloves, and tore into the nearest bag. Reaching past disposable coffee cups, crumpled receipts, and clamshell containers slopping over with slimy salad greens, I landed on something soft and round.</p><p>Drawing the mystery object into the light of my headlamp, I examined my prize: an unopened loaf of heritage-grain sourdough bread. I tossed it into the basket on my bike and kept digging.</p><h2>Over the past decade, I've gradually been wading deeper into the waters of the anti-consumerist lifestyle.</h2><p>Initially, my conversion was spurred by circumstance: After graduating college in 2008 — straight into the Great Recession — I eked out a living as a freelance catering chef and (unpaid) editorial intern.</p><p>That might have paid the bills somewhere else, but New York is one of the world's most expensive cities.<br /><br />I grew in an upper-middle-class home in Brooklyn Heights and pretty much wanted for nothing. On my own, though, I learned to economize.</p><p>I figured out I could get my haircut at beauty schools, my clothes from swap meets, and my pots and pans from Goodwill.</p><p>Craigslist had become popular for housing and hookups, but I <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2019/8/15/20806205/craigslist-free-stuff-furniture-new-york-city-story">regularly trawled its "Free" page</a> for houseplants, cat toys, and paperback novels.</p><p>As I got older and began to pay closer attention to politics and the economy, I felt disillusioned by capitalism, a system where billionaires thrive at the expense of the planet and a majority of its inhabitants.</p><p>My interest in opting out of consumer culture evolved from being just circumstantial to ideological.</p><p>In the throes of the pandemic, though, my thriftiness has reached new heights. And it's more important to my survival than ever before.</p><p><div type="image" title="Participants in a &quot;freegan trash tour&quot; in New York City get a crash-course in dumpster-diving." height="1463" width="2200" msid="76306960" hostid="261"></div></p><p>I've been working as a freelance journalist for the last decade, supplementing my income as a babysitter and personal chef.</p><p>In mid-March, those last two income streams disappeared almost overnight, victims of the pandemic, lockdown, and economic devastation. In a world of social distancing, inviting a stranger into your home to cook or care for your kids has quickly become taboo.</p><p>I applied for unemployment almost immediately but found my application stuck in purgatory, along with hundreds of thousands of others.</p><h2><strong>In full-on survival mode, I decided to step up my buy-nothing game.</strong></h2><p>I started by investing in my <keyword id="6181" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Food">food</keyword> security. I sent out an SOS to my neighborhood "Buy Nothing" Facebook group, where members exchange household items, books, toys, and more. I asked for spare gardening supplies for my own pandemic "victory garden."</p><p>Over the next few days, I biked around gathering empty five-gallon paint cans, discarded planters, and spare potting soil from neighbors, who left them out in their front yards, driveways, and trash collection areas for contactless pickup.</p><p>One generous soul left me a plastic bag filled with seed packets for organic squash, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.</p><p>On a sunny morning in Bed-Stuyvesant, I hit up a seedling giveaway hosted by the sustainable agro-ecology group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/queerkitchenbrigade/">Cuir Kitchen Exchange</a>, joining masked Brooklynites waiting patiently in line to receive kale and lima bean seedlings and packets of rainbow chard seeds.</p><p>I borrowed a drill, converted the paint cans into planters, and sowed my seed kit, setting it under a grow light in anticipation of a bumper crop of ultra-local produce.</p><h2><strong>My initiation into dumpster diving was somewhat accidental.</strong></h2><p>One night, while scrolling the Facebook barter group for free stuff, I noticed a woman gifting massive quantities of tasty-looking food: chocolate croissants, leafy green kale, and a bag's worth of clementines.</p><p>"Disclaimer: all food is salvaged," she wrote at the end of her post.</p><p>I messaged her, and she explained she had gotten the bounty through urban foraging, also known as freeganism or dumpster diving — basically salvaging safe and edible commercial food waste from the garbage.</p><p><div type="image" title="A freegan explores a trash bag full of pastries and bagels outside a New York City bakery." height="1652" width="2300" msid="76306962" hostid="261"></div></p><p>Supermarkets <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-grocery-stores-throw-out-so-much-food-2014-10">toss billions of tons of perfectly good food</a> each year: day-old bagels, produce with blemishes, cereal with conservative sell-by dates, even left-over promotional items. A small but devoted community of people, known as freegans, are trying to keep it from going to waste.</p><p>Once we struck up this online connection, the woman shared her secret dive spot: a new-to-the-neighborhood, upscale grocery store in Prospect Heights.</p><p>Since the market disposed of its trash twice a week, we agreed to each take a night.</p><p><div type="image" title="Inside these bins and bags is a bounty of safe and edible food ripe for the picking." height="1500" width="2000" msid="76306965" hostid="261"></div></p><p>That sourdough bread was my first salvage, but hardly my last. My surreptitious outings save me about $50 a week on grocery bills.</p><p>Typically, I don't even bother with the trash bags. I head straight for the two large composting bins set out for pickup by the city.</p><p>Inside, nearly pristine organic produce—an orange with a bruise, a bunch of chard that's gone slightly limp—is piled high, still sitting on the ice from the display case.</p><p>It's fresh and, other than cosmetic defects, there's nothing wrong with it.</p><p>On my most recent dive, I scored apples, lemons, two heads of broccoli, a bunch of spinach, and two varieties of kale.</p><p><div type="image" title="My latest freegan foray netted me a cornucopia of fruits and veggies." height="1500" width="2000" msid="76306970" hostid="261"></div></p><p>I also snagged three beautiful houseplants that had apparently outgrown their pots and had been tossed out.</p><p>If I had paid for this haul, I would have spent more than $100.</p><p>Since that first dumpster-dive score, I've periodically returned to stock my fridge with rescued food.</p><p>I regularly share what I've salvaged online and, for the most part, my friends and family members react with approval, sometimes even delight.</p><p>Cooking with this produce, strangely enough, reminds me of creating meals from the organic produce baskets I used to pay a pretty penny for: Week to week, you don't know what fruits and vegetables you're going to get, so you craft recipes on the fly.</p><p>It's actually my favorite way to cook.</p><p>My garden, too, is coming along nicely: my Facebook-gifted dried snap peas have flourished into tall green stalks that have started to bear slender pods. And the tiny kale and chard seedlings I was gifted in Bed-Stuy now curl out over the confines of the jerry-rigged planter I made out of a plastic storage bin I found on the curb.</p><p>As uncertainties surrounding when our country might reopen — and when the economy will bounce back — continue, I'm grateful for my long education in thrifty living.</p><p>And until I'm able to earn a decent paycheck again, I'll continue to dive deeper into freeganism.</p><p>If my government can't support me — a topic for a different essay — I'll figure out how to support myself. And eat well doing it.</p>

How the coronavirus crisis turned me into a dumpster-diving freegan

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Yajaira Saavedra is a co-owner of La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen in the South Bronx serving traditional Oaxacan dishes. </li><li>As an immigrant family-owned restaurant, they have been supporting the community and recently arrived asylum seekers for nearly 15 years.</li></ul><p><em>This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Yajaira Saavedra, a co-owner of La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen in the South Bronx. It has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p><p>My family arrived in the United States in the early 90s, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was roaming the streets of New York City. My mother worked as a seamstress for Calvin Klein and other luxurious brands in the Garment District factories on 34th Street, while my father worked pumping gas at a New Jersey gas station. </p><p>On the weekends, I would help my mom place buttons inside small envelopes so we could get an extra $20. My dad biked to work everyday including during the harsh winter months to cut expenses. </p><h2>Our biggest fear was to get separated by deportation</h2><p>ICE raids in my parents' workplace happened frequently. We always feared getting detained, being stopped by police, or somehow getting into trouble. Our biggest fear was to get separated by deportation.  </p><p>At the time, under the Clinton administration, cuts to social programs like food stamps made it hard for my family and community to make ends meet. I remember my parents doing things like "freeganism," commonly known as garbage diving, to ensure food was on the table. Firsthand, I saw ways in which capitalism under Democrats had let thousands of people fall through the cracks — and these issues are only getting worse by the day. Recently SNAP benefits are being cut across the country.</p><p>When I graduated high school, my family became involved in the movement to support the DREAM ACT. After the DREAM ACT failed to break a filibuster in the Senate, DREAMers brought the fight to every state, and the New York State Dream Act was passed in 2019. Under President Obama's second term, I was able to receive status under DACA.</p><p>Opening our own business guaranteed job security while combating the labor exploitation and wage theft my family often experienced due to our lack of citizenship. </p><div type="image" title="La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen" height="5059" width="3989" msid="99741549" hostid="261"></div><h2>Community means living together and supporting through catastrophe</h2><p>La Morada's political goal has always been mutual aid, and at the heart of that will always be abolition, reparations, and decolonization based on our Indigenous beliefs and customs.</p><p>As a Mixteca woman, I know community means living together and supporting through catastrophe, the birth of a child, or just when someone needs extra support. That's at the core of mutual aid — looking out for each other and sharing non-monetary resources. It could be sharing time on a weekend to support the community, physical strength to help stir the giant soup pot my mother cooks in, or knowledge to translate documents. </p><p>La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen, extends our cultural and familial activism. It was not about becoming "social entrepreneurs." It was about further connecting to our marginalized communities and advocating for ourselves because that is morally and ethically right.</p><p>We weren't thinking about making millions or a fortune — just a way to pay rent every month while helping our community. It's been hard at times; opening up during the economic downturn of 2009 and during the COVID pandemic, we find maintaining a business especially difficult. But if we've been through the worst and know how to survive with the bare minimum, we can work with what we have and share with others in need.</p><div type="image" title="Interior of La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen" height="3675" width="4900" msid="99741551" hostid="261"></div><h2>La Morada has served hundreds of hot meals daily to shelters for asylum seekers</h2><p>Since the pandemic began, La Morada has served hundreds of hot meals daily to shelters for asylum seekers. We work with housing organizations, climate justice activists, and campaigns against migrant detention and police abuses. </p><p>Migrants have long been used as political scapegoats for problems, and the Adams administration is no different. Seeing how differently the administration informs the Spanish media compared to the English media is frustrating. The lack of transparency with information and general manipulation has only worsened many of the city's crises. It's not a "migrant crisis" as many leaders have claimed — the shelter system was faulty for years before the so-called "migrant crisis."</p><p>We know of people who are still backlogged into the system and haven't received FHEPS, formerly Family Eviction Prevention (FEPS), which is supposed to be provided after individuals have spent 90 days in the shelter system. In most of these cases, the reason the unhoused population haven't received FHEPS vouchers is because there is no social worker or the case workers are very limited. </p><div type="image" title="La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen" height="6037" width="4025" msid="99741553" hostid="261"></div><h2>What the city is actually experiencing is a housing crisis</h2><p>Shelter management systems have been criticized for corruption and deceitful agreements between politicians, developers and non-profits. For example, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/June10/izquierdoarroyorichardsentencingpr.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richard Izquierdo Arroyo</a>, the grandson of outgoing Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx), is the chief operating officer of Neighborhood Association for Inter-Cultural Affairs (NAICA), a Bronx-based housing organization, despite the fact that he <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/June10/izquierdoarroyorichardsentencingpr.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pleaded guilty</a> to embezzlement charges. Victor Rivera, former president of the Bronx Parent Housing Network (BPHN), one of the largest shelter networks in the city, pleaded guilty to having <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/nyregion/victor-rivera-pleads-guilty.html#:~:text=The%20former%20head%20of%20one,city%20grew%20to%20record%20numbers." target="_blank" rel="noopener">accepted bribes from contractors</a>, faced accusations of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/nyregion/victor-rivera-bronx-homeless.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sexual misconduct from 10 women in the shelters he operated</a>, and was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/nyregion/victor-rivera-sentenced-bronx-bribes.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convicted of fraud in 2022</a>.  <em>[Ed. note: according to the New York Times, Rivera has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/nyregion/victor-rivera-homeless-shelter-allegations.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denied</a> the allegations of sexual misconduct, calling them "unfair, baseless and without merit."]</em></p><p>These stories of injustice and criminal behavior in housing assistance organizations point toward issues that were ingrained into the housing service industry long before asylum seekers were bused into New York City. As <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/concerns-raised-about-new-york-citys-plan-to-close-homeless-shelter-at-radisson-hotel-in-manhattan-in-june/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hotels in the city are closing as alternatives to shelters</a>, housing accessibility and shelter exhaustion can only get worse. Until we address the housing crisis for what it truly is, proposed solutions will fall short.</p><p>In order to fix this crisis, we have to move together as a community to strengthen and fix so many of the interconnected issues. New York City's right to shelter must be preserved for migrants. SNAP programs, rent stabilized apartments, and support from social workers are necessary for asylum seekers and the city as a whole. Stop defunding schools. All of these issues affect people who are just arriving and lifelong New Yorkers alike.</p><div type="image" title="La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen" height="4160" width="5978" msid="99741555" hostid="261"></div><p>In place of some of the city's failures, we're doing our best to make sure no one is left behind. We see you're hungry, come get a plate to eat. And when you feel better or whenever you can, come back and peel some potatoes because we could definitely use some extra hands. We just care about survival and taking care of each other.</p>

My family arrived to the US undocumented and now we own a Mexican restaurant in the South Bronx. For 15 years, we've used our business as a hub for asylum-seekers to make sure no one is left behind.

<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"I had my qualms about diving, but once I got started, I knew I would never stop," Robert Hernandez tells me before pulling a heavy black garbage bag up from the street curb.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">We're in downtown Brooklyn in front of a Key Foods grocery store, and Hernandez is just getting started for the night. A lifetime resident of the borough, Hernandez is middle-aged, Hispanic, and tonight he wears a baseball cap with the words "Never Give Up" emblazoned along the top. He's offered to take me and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=366979108&amp;authType=NAME_SEARCH&amp;authToken=7Bul&amp;locale=en_US&amp;srchid=837537061412625690147&amp;srchindex=1&amp;srchtotal=4&amp;trk=vsrp_people_res_name&amp;trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A837537061412625690147%2CVSRPtargetId%3A366979108%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary">Yana Maximova, a Portland, Oregon-based journalist</a>, "dumpster-diving."</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In the United States, approximately </span><a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib121.aspx">133 billion pounds of uneaten food are tossed in the garbage</a><span> every year. </span>"Dumpster diving" is the practice of looking through commercial or residential waste to recover some of that thrown-away food (and other items). It is the literal equivalent of the idiom "one man's trash is another man's treasure." </p>
<p dir="ltr">Just a year ago, Hernandez was frequenting the supermarkets in downtown Brooklyn as a customer. Every so often, he'd see perfectly good food wasting away near the dumpster and would be tempted to grab it. It wasn't until a new roommate told him about dumpster-diving and encouraged him to attend <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">a</span><a href="http://www.meetup.com/dumpsterdiving-4/?trax_also_in_algorithm2=original&amp;traxDebug_also_in_algorithm2_picked=original&amp;dont_store_trax_also_in_algorithm2=1"> monthly dumpster diving group</a> that he realized it was a viable practice. A group of "Freegans," people who forage for discarded food as part of a larger anti-consumerist ideology, led Hernandez <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">on a "trash tour." During the nighttime walk, he saw what neighborhood grocery stores like Trader Joe's, Garden of Eden, and Perelandra Natural Foods were leaving behind everyday. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">He was stunned.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"We have so many people starving in this country and then you head to the supermarkets and you see all this waste. It makes no sense," says Hernandez.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Hernandez now makes the rounds of downtown Brooklyn's grocery stores twice a week to pick through what they leave behind, which according to him, is bountiful.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span>The legal situation around dumpster diving is murky and </span><a href="http://trashwiki.org/en/United_States">depends entirely on the city you are in</a><span>. If you get caught in New York, what happens more or less depends on the attitude of the police officer. If you are looking through an actual dumpster and the police officer is having a bad day (or a store owner complains), he or she can book you for trespassing, littering, or disorderly conduct. But most of the time, the police and store owners don't get involved, as long as you are clean and don't make a ruckus. It's only a mildly risky endeavor.</span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span>At our first stop, a still-open Key Foods, we encounter about twenty garbage bags from the supermarket on the street corner, stacked neatly in a pile.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Maximova and Hernandez take to the garbage bags with gusto, stepping right into the pile, untying the first ones they grab and sticking their hands and a flashlight inside.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Maximova has been dumpster-diving since she moved to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia five years ago. In that time, she has fed herself almost completely from food she finds. She tells me proudly that she even catered her entire wedding in Pennsylvania using dumpstered food.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I am more apprehensive about the idea. It's not that I have any problem with garbage - a job at a swim and tennis club in my teenage years ensured that I did my fair share of handling nasty garbage bags - but I am more skeptical that I am going to find anything of use. I have distinct memories of handling hot, sticky garbage bags filled with some unidentifiable "garbage juice." There was never anything remotely appetizing in those bags.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Nonetheless, I get into the pile and untie a bag. All I find is soggy cardboard and some mushy peaches. I'm starting to think this adventure might be a bust.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span> "Look for the heavy ones," Maximova says. "The usually have the best stuff."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>She pulls out a heavy, half-empty bag and unties it. Inside is the first find of the day: no less than 30 individual containers of various flavored yogurts from Fage, Chobani, and a small organic company I've never heard of.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I rush over in amazement. A few customers cycle out of the store and look confusedly at us. We take turns pulling out the yogurt containers and wiping them off to place in a box. I look at the expiration date: more than two weeks away. Why the yogurt is being thrown away is a mystery, but I have a hunch.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Most Americans <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-sell-by-date-means-on-food-packages-2013-9">have little idea what "expiration dates," "sell-by dates," and "best-by dates" mean</a>. Most people tend to use these dates as deadlines for when to use or buy products, despite the fact that they mostly indicate guidelines for stores. Often, as stores get new shipments of food to place on the shelves, older - but still fresh - food with approaching expiration dates gets replaced in favor of new inventory. The old inventory gets discarded, despite being perfectly good.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Emboldened by the yogurt find, we keep searching through the bags, but Hernandez has gone through seven or eight with no luck and loses interest. I find a bundle of grapes and a package of Brussels sprouts, but we decide to leave those behind.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It's here that I learn a counter-intuitive rule about dumpster diving: divers are actually extremely picky about what they keep. Because there is so much good food thrown away every day there is a garbage pickup (three times or more per week), the question quickly evolves from "what will we find?" to "what do we want to take?" Instead of sticking around at Key Foods to look through every last bit of trash, we head to Garden Of Eden, a high-end organic market a few blocks away.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>There, we encounter another hazard of dumpster diving: garbage trucks. Dumpster divers hunt during a tight window of time, between when stores puts out their garbage (usually when they close) and when the garbage trucks pick it up, usually within an hour or two. This can make dumpster diving something of a race.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>At Garden of Eden, a garbage truck is busy emptying out a dumpster across the street and will be soon moving onto the Eden dumpster. We start looking through the dumpster quickly, and the garbage men don't seem to mind. The Eden dumpster is overflowing with clear bags, which makes the process easier because you can see what's inside and how salvageable it is. The only issue is that, because there are so many bags over the lip of the dumpster, it is hard to see what could be hiding underneath.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Within seconds, I find a large bag filled with breads of many different shapes, sizes, and types. From the other side of the dumpster, I hear that Maximova has found tons of produce and Hernandez, meanwhile, has found some donuts. I sort through my bag. The bread is still fresh, and I reason that it will probably last a week or more and take out several rolls and a loaf of ciabatta.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">I go over to have a look at Maximova's find. There are multiple bags filled with hundreds of ripe plums and nectarines. She starts pulling them out four at a time and I have to stop her because there is no way either she, I, or Hernandez will be able to eat all of it before it goes bad.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Not everything is good. There is a bag of mutilated avocados that look more like dirty guacamole than actual fruit. When I find a bag of potatoes and yams, I have to feel through for ones that aren't damp. The general warm, wet temperature inside the bag is off-putting and I only take two sweet potatoes. Despite the disappointments, we've gotten quite a bit from this dumpster and we decide to move on.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">We head off to Starbucks and Hernandez tells me that in the 1980s, he used to work at the American Stock Exchange as a data clerk. While the work was satisfying, he couldn't stand the culture on Wall Street and he grew disillusioned with capitalism as a system.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"The money was good, but I couldn't stand to see the greed that people sold their souls for," says Hernandez. "It felt shameful."  </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The critique of capitalism is common </span><a href="http://freegan.info/">among "freegans,"  who try to opt out as much as possible from American consumerist culture</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">For freegans, the juxtaposition between the sheer volume of good food in America that goes into the dumpster and the </span><a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx">17.5 million households in America that are food insecure</a> epitomizes the<span> wastefulness inherent in American society today.</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"We're killing the Earth by throwing away good food. It could be going to food banks, pantries, or churches. But instead it just gets thrown in a landfill," says Hernandez.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Over the course of the night, we visit three Starbucks, all within a few blocks of each other. All three have bulging trash piles, but most of the bags have wet coffee grinds in them, rendering whatever else is in there useless. This is another problem for divers: sabotage, both intentional and unintentional. According to Hernandez, some stores, to dissuade divers from going through their garbage, will intentionally mix good food with liquids, coffee grounds, or other contaminating trash, essentially destroying it.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>At the last Starbucks, we hit the jackpot - a clear garbage bag filled with the day's unsold pastries and sandwiches. Inside are rolls, croissants, cake pops, pecan pies, brownies, scones, flatbread chicken sandwiches, egg salad, etc. The expiration dates range from a day or two away to a week. I bite into a croissant. It tastes as good as any I've paid for. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>A Starbucks employee pokes her head outside of a door on the side of the store.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"All we ask is that you clean up after yourselves," she says, "otherwise, we get fined."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span id="docs-internal-guid-e5239710-f030-f0f2-7d2f-946ee5e295b6"><span>Dumpster diving etiquette dictates that divers untie and retie garbage bags, stack the bags the way they found them, and avoid leaving litter lying around the area. Most, but not all, divers abide by this. </span></span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>On our way out from Starbucks, Hernandez shakes hands with a tall, heavy-set black man, who tells him that the Trader Joe's dumpsters are now out. Hernandez thanks him and we keep walking. Hernandez tells us the man is homeless, one of the many he has made a point to talk to and show how to dumpster dive.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"It's about extending a hand to humanity," says Hernandez. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>As if on cue, we pass a shivering homeless man on the street. He is covered in a torn, bright blue windbreaker and has a scraggly blonde beard. His face is whittled down. All three of us stop. Hernandez walks up to the man and asks him if he'd like something to eat. He opens the bag of Starbucks sandwiches and tells him to take as many as he'd like. The man takes an egg-salad sandwich, but refuses to take more, despite Maximova's insistence. He thanks us repeatedly. The homeless man seems overwhelmed by the generosity.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The incident brings up another interesting wrinkle: most homeless people won't go into the dumpsters. Both Maximova and Hernandez have tried to feed homeless people with their dumpstered findings - which they eat themselves -and have been repeatedly denied. Only rarely do homeless people take them up on the offer.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"It's all about people's perceptions," says Hernandez. "Everyone is so brainwashed that food has to come from the store shelves, that it has to have a far off expiration date."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">We head to the evening's grand finale: Trader Joe's. The chain <a href="http://trashwiki.org/en/Trader_Joe%27s">is considered something of a mecca for dumpster divers all over the country</a>. The stores are so large and throw out so much food that everyday the dumpsters are put out, you can guarantee that you will find good food. Add in that so many of Trader Joe's products - from meat to vegetables, fruit, cookies, and salad - are packaged, and you can see why its a diver's paradise.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In front of Trader Joe's are no less than ten individual dumpsters, all filled to the brim with bags, and most of which have usable food inside. On some nights, Hernandez tells me, the scene at Joe's can become competitive, as divers from all over the city converge to pick through the findings. On those nights, Hernandez prefers to wait out "the wolves," as he calls them, because he believes the competition is not in the spirit of Freeganism, which is about community and sharing.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span> In quick succession, we find a dumpster filled with egg cartons, brie cheese, organic chicken, hummus, salad packages, squash, and pita bread. All of it is still fresh, and sell-by dates aren't even close. There's another dumpster filled with packages of tilapia, but fish seems a little too risky for me to take. Maximova confirms this suspicion, telling me to be very careful with meat and fish. Any packages that have bulging plastic, look swollen, or smell funky should be avoided, she says,</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It isn't long before we've filled up the shopping bags we have on us, and we've barely gone through four dumpsters.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"I have no idea why they throw these things out," Hernandez says, bewildered. "I don't know what their standards are. If I knew, maybe I'd understand why so much goes to waste."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I thank Hernandez for taking me and Maximova out for the tour. He reminds me not to eat anything before washing it: a cardinal rule of dumpster diving.</span></p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Here's a look at my take home at the end of the night:<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>And here's what the produce looked like after it was washed with hot water and white vinegar (as per Hernandez's suggestion):<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></h3>

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