There's a new breed of Dumpster diver in town.
They are freegans — a modernistic sort of urban hippie forsaking overconsumption for a more stark lifestyle. It's a lifestyle — freeganism as it's called that is catching on, even in Salt Lake City.
"It's becoming more mainstream and less stigmatized," Seattle resident Courtney Szper said in a telephone interview.
Utah's freegans are difficult to locate, but they do exist. They communicate via the Internet, detailing where the best food-producing Dumpsters in Salt Lake City are located, among other tidbits.
"Please be respectfull (sic), and when you are out diving, leave the place better than you found it," said one posting on the "DiveTribe SLC" Web site. It includes a map of 33 garbage bin sites, stretching from 300 South to the Avenues.
Freeganism — the word is formed by combining "free" and "vegan" — isn't just about salvaging good leftovers from other people's garbage, it's more of a social movement.
"Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation and sharing, in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity and greed," according to the Web site www.freegan.info.
The definition continues: "Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of production ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts, most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able."
Freeganism may not necessarily be illegal, either.
"If the garbage can is out on the street, it's not off-limits," said Salt Lake City police detective Robin Snyder. "If it's out on the curb, it's free game."
Police said someone caught sneaking into a garbage bin in an apartment complex, apartment building or on someone's property could be cited for trespassing and theft. In the past, police officers have busted people rummaging through the donation bins after hours at Deseret Industries. However, curbside trash is a freegan buffet.
Freegans collect furniture off curb sides and the hard-core live — or squat — in abandoned buildings. Often freegans enter a boarded-up place, fix it up and live there until they are booted.
Not all freegans are squatters. Others try to live in homes with a large number of other renters to lower their housing costs.
"It's basically the art of getting really good free stuff," said Sat Jiwan, a 28-year-old Maryland resident, in a telephone interview. Jiwan says his freeganism is more about responsible consumption. If bakeries are throwing away tons of edible pastries and bread, someone should be eating it, he said.
"I pick the fresh stuff that's on top and inspect it and make sure that there's nothing wrong with it. Just like you might inspect an egg carton in the supermarket," Jiwan said.
While most freegans do have to supplement their foraging and scrounging skills by actually going to the supermarket once in a while, freeganism can be very lucrative.
Szper, 25, said she became so good at collecting free items, like leftover stereos from college campuses or old couches left on the curb, she had to quit because it was cramping her minimalist style.
"I just got to the point where I would get more stuff than I wanted," Szper said. "It's like, who needs another stereo? We have six of them."
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com; bwinslow@desnews.com