Jesus fucking wept.

I have just this week heard about the disgusting concept of Freeganism. The most excellent Irish blogger Twenty Major had a little rant about it. He ended his post with:

The first Freegan I see in Dublin I am going to string him up by his bollocks from the Five Lamps and stone the cunt to death.

I sympathise.

Then I heard more about this vile practice by listening to a programme on the BBC World Service the other night, which I think also had some actual freegans on. Eventually I switched the radio off in utter revulsion and disgust.

What is Freeganism, you may ask? Here’s the general idea (from Wikipedia):

Many freegans get free food by pulling it out of the trash, a practice commonly nicknamed dumpster diving. Freegans claim to find ample amounts of clean, edible food in the garbage of restaurants, grocery stores, and other food-related industries, and this allows them to avoid spending money on products that exploit the world’s resources, contribute to urban sprawl, treat workers unfairly, or disregard animal rights. By dumpster diving, they prevent edible food from contributing to landfills and sometimes feed people and animals who might otherwise go hungry. Many freegans (and strict vegan “dumpster divers”) claim that they are able to eat very well, and even avoid paying for food altogether, due to this practice. Many vegan dumpster divers come to embrace freeganism in order to utilize more of the thrown-out food they find, which would otherwise be needlessly wasted.

Freeganism is not only utterly disgusting, it is unsustainable. If absolutely everything was free, we simply wouldn’t be able to survive. Unless we went back to trading goods rather than money - and what if you don’t have goods (or ‘goods’ of another kind?)? I guess you have to have something else. Oh, I know, what about tokens? We can call them… money! Then all you’ve got to do is get some. So, I guess you’ll have to sell your time, expertise or, if you have them, goods. Um, in about five seconds flat freeganism simply trips over itself.

What a stupid, naive and ill-thought out idea freeganism really is. Bunch of undignified wasters, the lot of them.