Of late, something strange has been happening in Richmond, British Columbia. More Canadians are looking at a rather unlikely spot for their next meal—the mighty dumpster! Welcome to Freeganism, a philosophy of living that is putting an unusual but increasingly familiar face on waste management in the community. As one of the most preferred and trusted homegrown providers of disposal bin services in Richmond, at Total Site, we have secured a ringside view of how this radically new way of thinking is revamping our waste management landscape.
What is Freeganism?
The movement—Freeganism—combines the words free and veganism; unsurprisingly, however, it has influence far beyond food choices. It is based on a rejection of consumerism and waste. Anyone following Freegan principles strives to spend as little as possible while minimizing consumption by repurposing waste that would typically end up in the trash, including food.
One of the core Freegan practices is dumpster diving, or collecting edible food and salvageable goods from commercial, residential, and industrial waste bins. This may be surprising to some, but Freegans emphasizes that dumpster diving is a sane and responsible response to the burgeoning waste produced by corporate greed.
The Richmond Freegan Landscape
Our Richmond has become a thriving hub of freegan activity in the recent past, for reasons that are not obvious on the surface. On the one hand, it has a diverse food scene, with differing cultural influences on the menus, which explains why there are so many disposal bin services in Richmond. On the other hand, it sits close enough to the city limits of urban Vancouver to make its trash accessible to Freegans from neighbouring locations.
LOCAL HOTSPOTS
Certain parts of Richmond have gradually transformed into Freegan hotspots over time. Commercial districts with large concentrations of restaurants and grocery stores are the ideal ones, but we at Total Site want to remind everyone that you cannot simply enter such private properties without valid authorization and start ransacking dumpsters.
COMMUNITY BUILDING
With more disposal bin services in Richmond coming up in recent times, the city’s Freegan community has gone beyond dumpster diving. Local Freegans share information periodically about sites for scavenging and organising meals prepared from reclaimed food while ensuring that others are well-informed about the perils of wasting food.
Impact on Waste Management Practices
Among those who have become increasingly involved in Freegan pursuits in Richmond, the emerging belief that crony capitalism offloads its trash on the most vulnerable amongst us, for the most part, has certainly not gone unrecounted:
INCREASED AWARENESS ABOUT FOOD WASTAGE
The more Canadians learn about the quality and quantity of food being wasted, the higher the pressure on businesses to reduce their net waste. Several restaurants and local grocers have already started donating leftover food to charities or offering substantial discounts on articles that are about to expire.
SHIFTS IN CORPORATE POLICIES
In Richmond, various commercial establishments have improvised their waste disposal practices in response to Freeganism—compacting their trash, renting locked dumpsters, and even lacing food with additives to make it tasteless, foul-smelling, or hazardous. These tactics, usually taken for liability reasons, have triggered meaningful discussions about how we should treat our food and garbage and how present-day corporations must play their part in shouldering this collective responsibility. Call Total Site now to learn about its disposal bin services in Richmond!
