How Wasteful Are You?

"Let's simplify our lives!"

That's what came out of my husband's mouth the other day as we were attempting to clean out our garage. We have so much crap in there. Stuff we do need and stuff we definitely DON'T need. So we threw out a few things but the garage is still crammed with bikes, a kiddie pool, slip and slides, camping gear, a rototiller that's never worked etc., etc. etc.

I have to admit,looking at all that stuff made me feel a little guilty. Wasteful, if you will. Did we really need all this stuff? Or course not. We wanted it so we bought it.

This very concept is what the "freegans" are all about: buy less and use only what you need. The "freegans" are part of a grassroots subculture that was featured on Oprah this past week. It involves people who want to live outside consumer society. They don't want to work, just to buy the next BIG thing. They feel the emphasis on buying the newest product and throwing away perfectly good "older" things is a waste of the world's resources. I can understand that concept, and am conscious about our environment, but I don't think I'd be willing to go to the extreme.

These people go garbage picking for food, all the time. It fascinated me that people were not embarrassed. I would be. I will say that the food they picked came from grocery stores and, besides being in the garbage seemed okay to eat. Much of it was boxed, canned or packaged food. But there was also fruit and veggies, tons of it, in fact. It truly showed me how much this country wastes. Astounding.

After watching the segment, I wasn't so grossed out, but I'm also not willing to change my ways and head over to Walmart or Kroger and start dumpster diving.

It was an interesting segment and made be think a bit more about how consumer driven this society is. Maybe it'll make you think, too. Check out Oprah.com and search for "freegan" and you can get more information.

Have a great day.