Brodie: Come on, this is the dirt mall. Cops don’t come here.Â
T.S.: Neither does any self-respecting consumer.Â
Mallrats, 1995
There was a nice article in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago (Not Buying It) that spotlighted a new lifestyle movement called Freeganism.
Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.Â
Can’t say eating out of dumpsters is my cup of tea, but I do like the concept of recycling and reusing goods from an environmental (and cost savings) perspective. There’s this crazy statistic that we in the US spend more money on trash bags annually than 90 other countries in the world spend on EVERYTHING!! I actually know a homebuilder in Culpeper who constructed a brand new house with “throwaway” waste materials collected from other sites over the years.
Anyhow, this article inspired me to add two new sections to Richmond Good Life entitled Used, Free, and Cheap and Used Books. These pages give you resources on all things used stuff (thrift stores, classifieds, flea markets, landfills, books, etc).  Â