Coming Clean....

After digging in the trash.... The New York Times (my local paper -- really!) has an amusing article about "freegans" or people who refuse to buy things. Right now is high season to go dumpster diving near universities (especially affluent ones!) and getting lots of goodies (and also see what Jr. is really spending his money on, and it's a lot of magazines, not just The Economist It's amazing what people throw away (a working iPod!)

These people take the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) to a delightful extreme. I am a big fan of freecycle, using it to both get and give stuff away, even re-freecycling at times. I found it funny that they highlighted colleges, since I went to one of those Hoity Toity affluent schools of "the League" though for some reason the affluence missed me back then. And since I had to take summer classes to graduate (don't ask, stupidity of a different sort, I didn't fail the classes, but never mind) and I use to raid dumpsters at the end as well. But mostly because people were too lazy to sell their books back. (Well I wasn't). The economists idea that people don't leave $100 bills lying around isnt' always the case. So I'd grab the books and go to the campus store (it was easier money than working at the computer lab, but then again that had some perks too)

Much of what we throw away is completely usable, we just get tired of it. I'm a big fan of yard sales and Massachusetts' Cape Cod's "Take it or Leave It" room at their junkyard. Not sure I'm ready to be a "freegan" but it does bring back memories...