March 1, 2005

Fighting the Powers That Be With Free Food

By Daniel Porras
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

To interview the Bay Area’s most active activist, you have to get in line with him at the San Francisco Department of Motor Vehicles. “Forgive me for economizing my time,” Scott Munson tells me after I agree to meet him at the DMV. He’s a very busy guy.

Time isn’t the only thing Munson economizes. He’s a freegan, a person who subsists on what our capitalist society throws away. Freegans, not to be confused with vegans – who don’t consume animal products -- eat only food they can get for free. And it doesn’t stop with food. Freegans like Munson scoop up everything from shampoo to art paper to perfectly good roses, all courtesy of you and me. It’s a pie in the face of American consumerism, and Munson, who attends up to a dozen activist-related gatherings a day, could probably write a manifesto on that subject.

With the DMV’s paper-choked bureaucracy as a backdrop, Munson, who’s been a freegan for 15 years, launches into his personal history. As a bike-bound young lad, he discovered sheets of colorful, uncut matchbooks in a Dumpster, and used strips of them to create race car tracks. He remembers the fat times at Dumpsters around Stanford University – before Chelsea Clinton’s enrollment lead to increased security -- when he could score perfectly good answering machines, computers, and furniture discarded by departing students. Munson also tells of a post-recession Dumpster lock-down in 1992. “We lost a lot of dumpsters,” he recalls. “A big wave of trash compactors were replacing them at Safeways and Luckys.” Many prized, high-end Dumpsters remain throughout the Bay, however, and Munson forbids me to reveal business names or locations in order to protect the most bountiful bins.

Freeganism is more than glorified Dumpster diving, its proponents argue. They are recycling the trash of a wasteful economy, says Munson. Less trash means fewer landfills, but actually consuming waste, if done on a large scale, closes the loop of the production-consumption cycle. As ecological economists argue, the Earth is not an endless supply of resources and a bottomless pit for waste. Freegans understand this concept, and do their small part to reduce the impacts of a throw-away society. Even if it means getting dirty.

“You’ll find diapers, I.V.s, and cat and dog feces from litter boxes” in residential Dumpsters, says Munson. On the other hand, “Grocery store Dumpsters can be quite clean,” he says. But when you’ve been a freegan as long as Munson has, you learn to collect the bounty before it gets marinated in dumpster juice. Munson has a rapport with many store managers who give him boxes of food on a regular basis. “If you’re polite, clean, and expedient,” he says, “you can get the food before it hits the Dumpster.” He also approaches delivery vans and grocery truck drivers, who often discard perfectly good food with small blemishes or slightly damaged packaging.

In the DMV parking lot, Munson lifts the back hatch of his green Dodge Caravan, revealing a cornucopia of free goods: potted tulips and daffodils, loaves of bread and bags of buns - (“There were five dumpsters full of bread!”, he exclaims) - organic pesto and tofu, vegetables, bags of Frito Lay chips, chocolates. It’s a van full of good, mostly edible, stuff. Munson – who’s the most civically-engaged person I’ve ever met – gives much of his booty to charities and the needy.

The line between trash and valuable donation is blurred in Munson’s line of work, and he cites laws that make it sticky to donate what some consider garbage to a shelter or soup kitchen. He has a keen eye (and nose) for food that has crossed the threshold, though, and says no one has gotten sick from his freebies. Munson’s own stomach is only troubled after eating too much free junk food while stuck in traffic.

Today, the van full of freegan fare is going to a group of down-and-out single mothers in the Mission. “If I can feed non-profits, then I’m subsidizing people’s time,” explains Munson, the Robin Hood of freegans. “People can do work for the environment or social justice issues or anti-war, feminist or Native American rights – they can keep being there at the office because they are fed,” he says. “I’m subsidizing activism.”

Munson also takes big, non-food scores to parties and rallies. He knows businesses that throw out display racks, Plexiglas, fasteners, hangers, bike tubes, straps, art paper, frames, foam core, matting – everything. Munson fills his van with the stuff. “If you put a big free pile out and there’s a few hundred people there, obviously you’re gonna find people who want this or that.” Suddenly, my own recycling efforts at home seem embarrassingly meager.

Spending an afternoon with Scott Munson is exhausting. His super-powered activism is obsessive, and listening to his endless philosophies on how to make society more just and inclusive is overwhelming. Sitting in his Dodge van on Mission Street, I feel a sudden need to go. I thank him, and he offers me some vegetables. “No thanks,” I say, “I’ve got food at home.”

That night after dinner, I find myself standing over the trash can in my kitchen with a half-a-meal’s worth of stir fry. I hate leftovers. Reluctantly, I take out a small Tupperware container and spoon in the food.