UPDATED: 3/10/08 Youtube video of the segment added.
The executive director where I work told me that there were some
freegans featured on Oprah the other day (which may have helped
convince one of her sisters to eat a meal she prepared which included
some food we had shared from our dumpster diving bounty). I've take a
few clips from the online slideshow and pasted them below with a link
to Oprah's site (and the blog of the freegans who were on the show).
Kudos to Daniel and Amanda -- looks like they got some good soundbites
in and raised the issue of consumption on a show with an enormous reach. It's nice to imagine the "Oprah effect" potentially convincing people to live more simply and consume less.
Since she started living as a freegan, Madeline says she is surprised
at how little she actually needs to live. "I've been looking at how
much I accumulated, and I'm still giving it away," she says. "When I
look at how people like my grandmother lived, she wouldn't be doing
this kind of throwaway society that we do now. She wouldn't be going
out and buying new outfits."
Lisa says seeing how much quality food and other items
Madeline was able to pull from the trash really opened her eyes.
"Freegans believe that, in a way, we are slaves to buying," she says.
"When you think about it, we work so hard, but for what? To buy more.
Whether it's a house payment or a car or food, we just want to continue
to consume. Freegans have decided to kind of try and turn their back on
it completely and stop buying stuff."
...
Daniel says he and Amanda adopted their freegan lifestyle out of
frustration with our wasteful culture. "I think we're 5 percent of the
population and we consume 30 percent of the world's resources. We just
think that's wrong that so many people suffer," Daniel says.
Amanda says she is not worried about what other people
think of them. "We'd much rather be known as people that dig in trash
than people that buy needless things," she says. "You have to learn to
not get your happiness from things. It's a pretty easy thing to learn
once you try it."
...
What made them think it was a good idea in the first place? Daniel says
freegan ideas about consumption fit into their beliefs. "We try to live
very simply, and we don't spend a lot on ourselves. We are very happy
with having a little," he says. "We like to make it a priority to share
a lot of our money. A lot of that comes from our Christian values of
sharing and generosity."
They say their scavenging can be so productive that they
sometimes can't even use everything they find! When that happens,
Amanda says, they either give their surplus to others or donate it to
shelters or charities. "Just put it back into the system rather than
into a landfill," she says.
I'm not sure if we're bona-fide either. :) We wish we'd have been able to get a lot more of our convictions out...but it's difficult when you're sitting beside Oprah Winfrey. heheh
Thanks for all you guys do. Would love to chat more when we get back home.
I'm curious to see the show (if it ever is released in online form somewhere), but I think it's forgiveable to have a little difficulty when you're on the spot like that. (That's what I tell myself anyway).
Yeah, let's do that when you return. Sounds good. Have a good trip.
The executive director where I work told me that there were some
freegans featured on Oprah the other day (which may have helped
convince one of her sisters to eat a meal she prepared which included
some food we had shared from our
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