A turkey and cheddar sandwich sits on an outer layer of trash in the dumpster, its cheese making the bread increasingly soggy in the hot sun. Isaac Safdie Miller, a computer engineering sophomore, eats the sandwich to prove a point.
In another dumpster across town, slightly imperfect strawberries and peaches and bruised bananas are discovered by Barrie Valencia, an environmental engineering sophomore, and her boyfriend Gregory John Ellis, a Cal Poly English graduate. Later, they make strawberry peach cobbler, banana bread and strawberry banana pancakes.
Ellis calls his method of food gathering “thoroughly sanitized dumpster diving.”
But some may attach the term “freegan” to Ellis, Valencia and Safdie-Miller. By salvaging and reusing others’ food, clothing and various wastes, freegans view life from an environmentalist’s perspective through their buying power, housing and transportation.
Ellis doesn’t mind the term freegan since it focuses on the cause and actions people can take with their buying power.
“I know my way of life cannot be multiplied for everyone because I’m a free rider of sorts,” Ellis said. “I do depend on the system… but I think that there are better ways like the local sustainable farming for feeding the population,” Ellis said.
The Lifestyle
“As soon as I moved into my new house, I scoped out the nearest dumpsters,” Ellis jokes as he walks hand in hand with Valencia to their usual dive spot in the cool night air.
“She sometimes holds the tops up,” Ellis said as he lifts the top to the garbage can and hoists his five-foot-eight inch frame up into the dumpster.
“Oh, let’s see what we have here… ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’” he said as he lowers his small key chain flashlight to show the thrown out DVD.
Ellis lifts a slightly-worn pair of blue jeans out of the can, sizing them up to himself to see if the denim would fit him. Valencia stands next to the dumpster can in the dark parking lot.
“I don’t have the appropriate footwear,” Valencia says laughingly as she watches Ellis continue his dive, which he complained tonight was a dissatisfactory day since the store workers had dumped all the floor sweepings on top of the trash pile.
As he sifts through the mounds of old produce boxes and gray and black trash bags, he finally finds a box of Giant brand strawberries, but refuses to take them, claiming they looked too fresh and declared he wouldn’t buy them in the store anyway since they were probably chemically treated.
The couple also have other spots throughout San Luis Obispo at local organic health food stores where employees are, as Ellis says, “hip to dumpster diving” by leaving out expired food next to garbage cans. Security guards of Costco in San Luis Obispo weren’t too friendly, he said they chased him from the trash cans.
An overall successful dive provides communal meals for themselves and sometimes the couple’s friends. The food is prepared with a thorough washing and cooking. Ellis is up front with a disclaimer that nobody who has eaten his food has become sick, including himself.
But the dumpster dives do not only yield edible items.
“My best find has been a Moped,” he said, which he now uses for transportation.
“We typically hold the value that less is more and we just try to do things that are a little bit out of the ordinary,” said Sean Ryan, 25, a Cal Poly biology graduate who lives with Safdie-Miller at the Establishment, a commune in downtown San Luis Obispo.
The Expert Diver
“We are pretty avid urban fruit pickers. Isaac is pretty much the resident dumpster diver,” he said as he points to tall, skinny 19-year-old in a rat costume.
“When he first came to the house, his deal was going to the 24-hour donut shop and picking out of the dumpster. We have a free pile at the house and he would bring us this huge pile of donuts.”
Safdie-Miller, a Tennessee transplant, does not like the term “freegan” applied to him.
“I’m just cheap. I’m not a freegan. It has nothing to do with principle,” Safdie-Miller said.
Jeremy Grodkiewicz, fellow diver and industrial engineering senior, agrees.
“I’m just thrifty. I think of the whole thing as redefining myself as an anti-consumerist,” Grodkiewicz said. “I like the idea of a trade, if someone made a bag I would buy it since I don’t like corporations and the fact that trades are disappearing from our country.”
Dumpster diving is not the only source of food for Safdie-Miller and Grodkiewicz. The two work at the Cal Poly Organic Farm for vegetables and fruits and also pick tomatoes and pineapple guava on hidden spots throughout campus.
“There’s also new strawberry patches by the new stadium and right in front of the Dexter building there is red fruit that is edible,” Grodkiewicz says.
“It looks weird but tastes really good.”
Safdie-Miller and Grodkiewicz live frugally by spending less than $30 a month on groceries.
“Sometimes we’ll get together at two in the morning and bike around whenever we are bored. Last year we used to go a lot more since Trader Joe’s is more strict,” Grodkiewicz said.
But they say the food diving lifestyle has changed within the last year. Safdie-Miller used to find luxury items such as frozen lamb which he shared with friends and ate for months.
Now, he said that the items are harder to find because that grocery stores in San Luis Obispo are stricter about dumpsters, sometimes putting locks on them to prevent those who choose to dive.
But Safdie-Miller claims the locks do not discourage divers since the tops can be easily taken off.
His favorite dives are San Luis Sourdough and Taco Works, for his favorite disposed tortilla chips.
On midnight trips, the two bring their backpacks for food storage and attach a carabiner to hang extra bags of salvaged goods on an above-average dive.
The Values of a Minimalist
Grodkiewicz admits to some good items but some scary ones too.
“My scariest find was the sandwich that Isaac ate. It had nasty cheese and Mayo on it and it was disgusting.”
Safdie-Miller says he ate the sandwich to prove the immeasurable food waste San Luis Obispo produces and throws away. He recalls a program from his home state called Nashville’s Table where trucks with food warmers transporting extra food from big restaurants to food to local shelters.
Even so, Safdie Miller claims his lifestyle is ‘more about living efficiently’ than making anti-capitalistic statements like other freegans.
“I don’t have enough buying power, then again, my house does spend thousands of dollars a week at Trader Joe’s, New Frontiers and the Food Co-op.”
Unlike other college students who save money by eating ramen, Safdie Miller is living minimally in a new, different and for some people astrange way.
“I’m just trying to get through school without debt. I don’t eat on campus and not just because it’s the most unsustainable food ever,” he added. “They are very wasteful.”
Cassandra J. Carlson is a journalism senior and the Mustang Daily’s wire editor.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cal Poly Causes is a biweekly series about Cal Poly students, faculty and staff who want to share their experiences about a local, national or global level issue. Please send submissions to mustangdailywire@gmail.com.