Freeganism, Principles, and Underwear, Oh My!

No, I have not bought underwear yet. Can I tell you something? Organic underwear? Is kinda ...ugly. And seriously expensive. I know, I know, natural dyes, blah blah blah. But look at this!! Even the cut seems unflattering. Do I seriously have to spend $19 for granny panties?! Someone heeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeeeeeeee.

So yeah, no underwear. But what I have done is eat out. Pretty much the second my Pseudo Freegan month ended.

Being a freegan, even the pseudo freegan kind, is interesting. It was actually less difficult to find food than I thought. Pretty much every day at the office, someone would order food, or bring in bagels, or something. And so, I would eat ... whatever was lying around in the office. Which meant carbs, carbs, and more carbs until Awesomest Co-worker freaked out that I was going to overdose on carbs (psssh as if THAT'S possible) and made me eat some minestrone soup she had in her cube.

Here's the thing. Freegans, like beggars, cannot be choosers. I don't know if the NYC freegans raid organic gardens, or what, but personally? I was eating mostly non-local, non-organic free bagels and cream cheese, topped with the occasional conventionally grown tomato. When my mom sent me home with veggie burgers, I ate the veggie burgers straight for a week. Not the sort of thing I tend to eat that often since veggie burgers are pretty processed, but ... again. It was free.

One of the things I really appreciated about my non-consumerist year was that it allowed me to live in accordance with my principles. For example, a few years ago, there was a brouhaha over some Target employees refusing to fill the morning-after pill for customers. Target defended its employees, basically stating that it was up to the employee's discretion whether or not to fill the prescription or not. I was really pissed, but other than writing Target a stern email, I did nothing. You see, I WANTED to stop shopping at Target, truly, I did, but, I just didn't see such a thing as really POSSIBLE.

Looking back, that seems really ridiculous. I seriously thought that I had no choice but to shop at Target? Was someone holding a gun to my head and forcing me to purchase cute, but totally unnecessary purses? Why did I feel like I had no options?

I think part of the problem is, you get overwhelmed. Every single clothing company reportedly uses sweatshop labor. Walmart depresses local economies and treats its employees poorly. How can you boycott every major store on the planet? You can't, right? And if you can't, then you may as well shop everywhere.

That, in sum, was my argument for years. But this past year, I managed to go a whole year without purchasing anything from any of those major clothing stores. And you know what? It's not impossible. Even now, when I plan to start buying clothes, there are plenty of thrift stores to shop at (so if I want, I'm able to buy Gap clothes without actually giving money to Gap), and more and more eco-friendly stores with fair labor practices. And you know, what? It is so empowering when you realize that no, you are not entirely dependent on big huge clothing stores. You don't HAVE to shop at Target; in fact, you do just fine without Target.

On the other hand, with the freegan food thing, I felt much more conflicted. I feel very strongly about building the market for local and organic food. So the fact that I wasn't buying, that I wasn't sending my money to local food economies, was strange.

It's a delicate balance isn't it? Between not buying and opting out and supporting sustainable economies and opting in? During my non-consumerist year, I balanced the not buying durable goods with buying food at restaurants, buying songs off iTunes, paying for concerts, movies, plays, and museums. But during my pseudo freegan month, that balance was gone, and it felt weird.

Sure, I was saving money, and reducing food waste. But what about my principles? Is it really principled to be eating nothing but non-organic bagels and conventional cream cheese for a month just because it's free? Is freeganism taking non-consumerism too far? Even pseudo-freeganism?

Eventually, and, I don't know, maybe the carb overloading was causing hallucinations, but I started to come up with this analogy. Just as it takes all kinds of species in an eco-system, perhaps it takes all kinds of eco-nuts. You have your herbivores, your omnivores, and then there are the freegans: the scavengers. And you need the right balance of all these types of species. Freegans, therefore, are performing a necessary function in this eco-system.

Necessary, perhaps, but I think unfortunately, the freegans will have to do without me from now on. The farmers' market is beckoning, and, to be perfectly honest, I'm a little tired of bagels.