If things look a little greener around here this April, there's a good reason. Our editorial staff is busy expanding the ideals of Earth Day into a month-long celebration of energy conservation, alternative transportation, recycling tips and about a million ways you can be a better friend to the planet. Welcome to Green Month, Milwaukee.

Perre Kerch eats a Trader Joe's pizza for dinner that looks, smells and probably tastes a lot like the frozen pizza you ate last week. The difference is, just a few hours earlier, Kerch's pizza was in a dumpster behind the specialty grocery store.

"I 'dumpster dive' a couple of times a week," says Kerch, 25. "It depends on the weather."

Kerch is one of a growing number of people who eat mostly packaged, still-fresh food that grocery stores and restaurants throw in the trash. For years, such people were referred to as "dumpster divers," "urban foragers," "alley surfers" or "junk pickers," but in recent years, the term "Freegan" emerged.

According to the Freegan Web site, "Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources … After years of trying to boycott products from unethical corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself."

Eating discarded food -- sometimes called "waste reclamation" -- is just one aspect of the Freegan lifestyle. Many Freegans also embrace eco-friendly transportation, rent-free housing (squatting) and working less / voluntary joblessness.

Kerch, however, works a full-time job as a drywall installer, and dumpster dives by choice. He regularly checks the garbage bins at the Outpost, Aldi, Sendik's, Lena's, Breadsmith and Trader Joe's.

"So much food is going to waste. It doesn't make sense to buy food when I can get good food from the trash can," he says.

Micah Johnson agrees. He says he spends about $10 a week on food -- mostly cups of coffee -- and the rest of his diet depends on what he finds in the trash.

"I think I eat better than most people. A lot of slightly bruised fruits and vegetables. Boxes of crackers a day over their expiration date," he says. "It's gotten to the point that scads of people can now live off of what others toss away."

Kerch says he only buys vegan food, but when retrieving food from the trash he's open to most edibles, including meat. "Other (dumpster divers) are more picky, but I'll take just about anything," he says.

Kerch doesn't pay attention to expiration dates. Instead, he determines for himself through sight and smell if the discarded food is fresh or rancid. On a recent Trader Joe's visit, he scored the aforementioned frozen pizzas, a few packages of cheese (one was slightly moldy, the others completely mold free), miscellaneous produce and loaves of still-fresh bread.

Trader Joe's around the country are known among Freegans as good places to score trashed food, but Kerch says employees at the Glendale location have yelled at him and shooed him away.

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19 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by ericap11 on April 17, 2008 at 4:31 p.m. (report)

That last comment by victor made me laugh. Thanks for that.

Posted by FunkyBrewster on April 15, 2008 at 11:08 p.m. (report)

Wholefoods gotta have a whole lotta wasted food? Why dont they loot that? Almost anything you could imagine could be going on in a dumpster! If something goes wrong with a food product... like exposure to toxic chemicals, human waste, disease outbreaks, etc. they throw it away not expecting someone is going ot eat it! I'd say parents who feed their kids from dumpsters should be charged with child abuse. People puke in dumpsters piss in em throw their dogs and cats scat in em. Maybe you wanna pick the corn out my scat too before i flush it... We used to go to the "free beer" spot and drink beer from a beer distributors dumpster before we found out they couldn't sell the ones we drank because a cleaning product had contaminated all of them.

Posted by Victor Golf on April 15, 2008 at 11:13 a.m. (report)

Bums eat trash, there is nothing wrong with it. But I don't think we should knock people for being "wasteful" because they put refuse in the proper place. One of the guys says "I think I eat better than most people. A lot of slightly bruised fruits and vegetables. Boxes of crackers a day over their expiration date," . I think "most people" are doing a little better than eating bruised fruit and stale crackers from a dumpster. But if it makes him feel good, God bless the little garbage picker.

Posted by wackygrl on April 15, 2008 at 9:39 a.m. (report)

Reduce, reuse, recycle! Way to put it into action people. Less trash in the landfill is a good thing. Caring for the planet and feeding people at the same time... cool. Dignity and pride are relative terms. If it is beneath your dignity, don't do it. If it isn't- go for it. There are whole communities of people who live in dumps in developing countries. If it works for the people who are doing it then that's what matters.

Posted by custom123 on April 15, 2008 at 7:27 a.m. (report)

These clowns have to be Hillary supporters. If only Lena would have won maybe things wouldn't be so bad in Milwaukee County.