Mention dumpster diving and it’s likely that the first image people envision is a male in tattered clothing, a wool hat, torn black jeans, boots that have no laces and a red-cheeked, drunken face jumping head first into a big pile of garbage to come out with half chewed apples, rotted eggs, and spoiled milk.
I’m here to tear down that stereotype. Yes, I’ve gone dumpster diving myself. OK, it wasn’t actually in a dumpster – it was plastic garbage bags that were placed on the sidewalk, but the concept is still the same.
I was first turned onto dumpster diving by a friend of mine who said he regularly used to go and get all sorts of fresh food and produce for free. When he told me this, I looked at him with the same head cocked and scrunched up eyebrows with which you are reading this.
He told me that he would go and get heads of fresh kale, bottles of juice, apples, bananas, and loaves of bread. After some minutes, I was definitely intrigued. Not only by getting free food, but also by the fact that these stores literally throw away all of this food. I thought that we were in a recession and there was a food shortage, which cause people to live on the streets and starve.
After hearing his stories, I promised myself that I would one day take the voyage into “dumpster diving.” I’d do it for no other reason than curiosity as to what is being tossed out and what I could find.
The night finally came. My alarm went off at 1a.m., and I got myself dressed. I was all prepared with my black sweatpants, black hooded sweatshirt, black wool hat, head lamp and a bandanna to cover my face. I couldn’t possibly let anyone see me rummaging through the trash now, could I?
I took my reusable bags and made the trek down the street to the store. There were about a dozen or so large black garbage bags piled on the sidewalk. I put my workout gloves on, lifted up my bandanna, flipped on my headlamp and started to untie the first bag.
The first bag had some tomatoes that were a bit squishy, red peppers and rotted pears. This is exactly what I thought it would be. A bunch of old rotting produce in a bag. I went through two more bags before I hit my first jackpot.
I came across a bag that had a few dozen bananas that were browned. When I buy my bananas I let them sit on my counter for a week until they start to brown. They were perfect. I packed them into my bag along with some tomatoes and peppers.
After going through only two or three bags, I called it a night. I just wanted to see what this was all about and how much food really was wasted.
It wasn’t until I got back to my apartment, shortly before 2a.m., and laid all the produce out onto the table that I realized how much that I had taken. In front of me were about two and a half dozen bananas, three or four tomatoes and a few red peppers.
They all weren’t perfect looking, but they were all totally edible and usable. The ones that weren’t I set aside to bring to my community compost center. The rest I planned on using and did.
I thought this would be a one-time event, but it’s something that I have since done about once a month. I even once did it in the rain. Instead of setting the alarm I was already up and decided to go. About half way there it started to rain. I wasn’t turning back. It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience. I mean, come on, I was going through garbage in the rain. Not so much fun.
Here are some things that I was able to score during my other dumpster diving adventures: two packages of portabello mushrooms, a box of organic crackers, three pounds of dried cherries, five clamshells of Earthbound Organics salads, organic carrot juice, two boxes of organic creamy tomato soup and bananas. I always score at least a dozen bananas.
Some of these items are blemished and some just have dented packaging. Regardless, they are still perfectly fine for human consumption.
If I had shopped at the store one day earlier, I would have spent somewhere in the range of $40-60 at the low end for all that. The salads alone would’ve been at least $20.
So what would’ve happened to all that food if I didn’t save it from being tossed out? It would’ve gone straight to the landfill to rot away and potentially do harm to the environment and our atmosphere.
Not only is the food being tossed, but it’s traveling a few thousand miles all the way from Peru to be tossed out. From a common sense and environmental aspect that doesn’t make much sense to me. The bananas are probably spending more time in transit from South America to New York than they did on the store shelves.
Instead of being tossed, I was able to save them from landfill and put them into my belly where food belongs.
This got me thinking even more. I’ve been doing this at one small store in New York City, and have seen the amount of food that’s wasted and sent to landfill. There are hundreds of stores throughout the city and the world; how much food is being tossed on a daily basis?
In my opinion this isn’t really an issue because the problem is out of sight, out of mind. The food gets tossed and we never “see” it again, so it just goes away. With all of the problems we have with homelessness and the recession, I’m not sure why we’d want usable food to get thrown way.
In talking to friends about this, most of them think that dumpster diving is gross and don’t understand why I do it. To them, I say that wasting food is gross and I don’t understand how we can be so irresponsible.
Carebags Reusable Produce Bags
People who live an organic lifestyle tend to care about our environment. People who live an organic lifestyle also purchase a lot of fresh produce. That’s where Carebags Re-useable Produce bags come in. One Carebags pouch contains 4 reusable drawstring produce bags for $12.49CDN. The bags we tested were see-through, strong, and plenty large enough for us to stuff as much produce into each bag as we desired. We will not go grocery shopping without them. www.carebagsonline.com.
Health: A Wise Investment
The hardest thing to get rid of is the brainwashing that conventional wisdom has instilled into the modern American.
People have asked me how hard it is to cure cancer or diabetes. These are actually two of the easiest “incurable” diseases to rid your body of. The hard part is to change one’s way of thinking. The hardest thing to get rid of is the brainwashing that conventional wisdom has instilled into the modern American.
Eating right is simple, but it’s not easy. Not for most people. When I tell people what foods to avoid they say, “But that’s everything I eat!”
Yeah, and that’s exactly why you’re sick!
If you eat mostly raw, fresh organic vegetables and fruit and avoid refined foods, you will rid the body of nearly every disease. We need to stop thinking of disease as some bug that attacks us, some microscopic evil creature that comes into our bodies and takes over. A health body and a healthy immune system do not succumb to disease. Most of the diseases people fear these days are simply caused by the body breaking down. Microscopic organisms that prey on us are actually preying on decaying matter. Disease is a symptom of an unhealthy body, not the cause.
Though eating right is easy, learning how to eat right is extremely difficult for most people. And taking the time to properly prepare food rather than pop in a microwave dinner, an impossible challenge. Just because it’s in the health section or it has a green wrapper or is “made with organic ingredients” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Learning to eat for the sole purpose of nourishing the body at its cellular level is such a paradigm shift for most people, the hard part is not what to do, but how to do it.
Medications are toxic chemicals that suppress symptoms while damaging the body at a cellular level. Many of them damage the immune system. This is a foreign concept if you’ve taken a pill for every ache and pain for thirty years.
Instead of investing in disease with your time and money, why not invest in health? Instead of medical insurance and over the counter and prescription drugs, co-pays, and sick days, what if you invested your time into learning about the best supplements? What if you spent your money on healthy food? What if you spent time preparing food and truly being involved with what fuels and nourishes you? What if what went into your body to nourish and heal you was one of the most important things in your life?
Does it seem like a radical concept? It is for most people. But consider this – would you rather take the time to learn about nutrition now? To gain the knowledge and the appreciation of how our bodies actually work? Or would you like to spend even more energy later on in life learning about your new disease and all of the drugs and allergies that come along with it?
To Consume or not to Consume
On the other hand, if cars ran forever, and we never bought another new car again, we would be stuck with gas guzzling vehicles. There is something to be said for progress. As we vote with our wallet we push technology forward thanks to competition. If no one bought the Toyota Prius, then companies wouldn’t see the need to build the new all electric vehicles. And as we purchase these vehicles technology will improve every year.
The same argument can be said for solar panels, televisions, water heaters, homes, and clothing. Purchasing a home and making it as energy efficient as possible is great, but if it weren’t for the rich consumers who have paid handsomely to build their luxury, custom, technologically advanced, energy efficient homes we wouldn’t have some of the technology to remodel our homes with.
Personally, when I’m deciding if I shouldmake a new or a used purchase, I decide whether or not the product may enrich my life. And if I am replacing an item I consider the likelihood of the item being put to good use by someone else. I do not know if this is the best approach, but I am trying to look ahead whenever I consume resources.
Monsanto Company Profile Part I of IV
If ever there was a company that stands for everything Organic Lifestyle Magazine stands against, it’s Monsanto. To us they are the villain, a company that embodies virtually everything we at OLM believe to be wrong with big business today. We would be hard pressed to find a company whose products have done more to harm our planet.
Many argue that Monsanto’s potential to devastate life as we know it is second only to producers of atomic bombs. Ironically, Monsanto was also heavily involved in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the world’s first nuclear bomb.
Monsanto started in 1901 as a chemical company. Their first product was saccharine, a coal tar product, which has had a controversial history. You may know it as Sweet‘N Low, the artificial sweetener sold in little pink packages.
Though saccharin was their first, Monsanto is also well known for many other chemical and chemically based products including Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, Polychlorinated biphenyl (commonly known as PCBs), Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT), and RoundUp.
Today, Monsanto is a leader in the bio-tech industry selling RoundUp ready GMO seeds. Its main crops are soy, cotton, sugar beets, and canola. Its controversial bovine growth hormone, rBST, was sold to the Eli Lilly Company earlier this year.
We asked Brad Mitchell, Director of Public Affairs for Monsanto if we were dealing with a new Monsanto since our take on Monsanto’s reputation is one of deception, corruption, bribery, and environmental degradation, a company that made significantly bad choices.
“I think more than anything, it’s a new age,” he said. “…I think you’re holding the Monsanto of the middle part of the 20th century against the standards of today. So, for instance, if you look at PCBs we all know today that what Monsanto did there was wrong. It shouldn’t have been done. Did we, Monsanto, or society as a whole know in the 60s or the 50s that that was wrong? I don’t think that we were as environmentally sophisticated as we are today.
“…I’m not saying that we’re not liable, that we shouldn’t have done it, and all that, but you know, when you make these kind[s] of statements about how Monsanto obviously disregarded human health and public safety and the environment for profit, I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you what was in people’s hearts and minds. I do believe, however, that to some extent we’re being held against today’s standards for actions that occurred half a century ago.”
Perhaps we could agree that these actions occurred half a century ago if Monsanto had voluntarily embarked on a clean-up of PCB contamination in Anniston, Alabama, in any decade following the 50s or 60s. If they had, perhaps we could believe the corporation has grown a conscience. According to The Washington Post, it was February 2002 when Monsanto was held liable by an Alabama jury for all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. The Post quotes the legal definition of outrage under Alabama law as conduct, “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”
The Center for Food Safety maintains a website, www.monsantowatch.org. On this site they report, “In August, 2003, Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims brought by more than 20,000 residents of Anniston, AL, over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.”
History tells us Monsanto was well aware of the damage their silence and lack of action brought Anniston as The Center for Food Safety also reports,
The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated.”
Monsanto can, however, claim the Monsanto of today is not the Monsanto of yesteryear. According to Wikipedia, the Monsanto of 1901-2000 and the current business are now two legally separate corporations, though they share the same name as well as many of the same executives and workers. The “new” Monsanto is an agricultural company (as opposed to a chemical company).
Are Monsanto’s misdeeds a thing of the past? In 2005, BBC News reported that Monsanto agreed to pay a $1.5 million dollar fine for bribing an Indonesian official “to avoid environmental impact studies being conducted on its [bio-tech] cotton.” Monsanto said it accepted full responsibility for its “improper activities” and agreed to three years of close monitoring of its business practices by American authorities.
GMO seeds were approved by the FDA under the GRAS designation—generally recognized as safe. As such, Monsanto’s bio-tech seeds were granted exemption from premarket approval by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Due to this ruling, the onus to ensure the safety of genetically altered food created by Monsanto rests with Monsanto, a company whose actions have revealed an unparalleled disregard for human life and environmental safety.
Opponents of GMOs often quote a cavalier statement made by Phil Angell, Monsanto’s former director of corporate communications to author Michael Pollan. In Pollan’s article, Playing God in the Garden, published in the New York Times Magazine in 1998, Angell is quoted as saying,
Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”
We asked Brad Mitchell, Director of Public Affairs for Monsanto if we were dealing with a new Monsanto since our take on Monsanto’s reputation is one of deception, corruption, bribery, and environmental degradation, a company that made significantly bad choices. “I think more than anything, it’s a new age,” he said. “…I think you’re holding the Monsanto of the middle part of the 20th century against the standards of today. So, for instance, if you look at PCBs we all know today that what Monsanto did there was wrong. It shouldn’t have been done. Did we, Monsanto, or society as a whole know in the 60s or the 50s that that was wrong? I don’t think that we were as environmentally sophisticated as we are today.
…I’m not saying that we’re not liable, that we shouldn’t have done it, and all that, but you know, when you make these kind[s] of statements about how Monsanto obviously disregarded human health and public safety and the environment for profit, I wasn’t there. I can’t tell you what was in people’s hearts and minds. I do believe, however, that to some extent we’re being held against today’s standards for actions that occurred half a century ago.”
Perhaps we could agree that these actions occurred half a century ago if Monsanto had voluntarily embarked on a clean-up of PCB contamination in Anniston, Alabama, in any decade following the 50s or 60s. If they had, perhaps we could believe the corporation has grown a conscience. According to The Washington Post, it was February 2002 when Monsanto was held liable by an Alabama jury for all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. The Post quotes the legal definition of outrage under Alabama law as conduct, “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society.”
The Center for Food Safety maintains a website, www.monsantowatch.org. On this site they report, “In August, 2003, Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million to settle claims brought by more than 20,000 residents of Anniston, AL, over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.”
History tells us Monsanto was well aware of the damage their silence and lack of action brought Anniston as The Center for Food Safety also reports,
The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated.”
Monsanto can, however, claim the Monsanto of today is not the Monsanto of yesteryear. According to Wikipedia, the Monsanto of 1901-2000 and the current business are now two legally separate corporations, though they share the same name as well as many of the same executives and workers. The “new” Monsanto is an agricultural company (as opposed to a chemical company).
Are Monsanto’s misdeeds a thing of the past? In 2005, BBC News reported that Monsanto agreed to pay a $1.5 million dollar fine for bribing an Indonesian official “to avoid environmental impact studies being conducted on its [bio-tech] cotton.” Monsanto said it accepted full responsibility for its “improper activities” and agreed to three years of close monitoring of its business practices by American authorities.
GMO seeds were approved by the FDA under the GRAS designation—generally recognized as safe. As such, Monsanto’s bio-tech seeds were granted exemption from premarket approval by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Due to this ruling, the onus to ensure the safety of genetically altered food created by Monsanto rests with Monsanto, a company whose actions have revealed an unparalleled disregard for human life and environmental safety.
Opponents of GMOs often quote a cavalier statement made by Phil Angell, Monsanto’s former director of corporate communications to author Michael Pollan. In Pollan’s article, Playing God in the Garden, published in the New York Times Magazine in 1998, Angell is quoted as saying,
Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”
When we asked Mr. Mitchell if he was familiar with this statement, he said he thought the statement had been made by a Monsanto foreman and that it was taken out of context. “I don’t know the gentleman, but I do know the general feeling here. There is nobody here at Monsanto that I know that says, ‘Screw safety, that’s not our problem, it’s FDA’s.’ I think what the gentleman quoted is referring to is that when it comes down to it, the law, by the law, it’s FDA’s responsibility. I don’t know a single person at Monsanto who does not believe that we have the responsibility. But if you want to look at the law, the final say on this, and the final arbiter, and the people legally charged with safely stating whether it’s safe or not is not Monsanto, it’s FDA.”
Mitchell tells us he and Monsanto’s scientific team have never seen a study that shows any significant risk associated with GMO foods.
I’ve worked with our scientific affairs team, so when studies come out to do analysis and that sort of thing, we have yet to see a study which we think shows us any significant risk with these things. So, those studies are best addressed on a one-on-one basis, and I would say that there are just as many studies, independent as well, that show (chuckles) that there are not risks with them [GMOs].”
He argues that the oft referenced study by Árpád Pusztai showing GMO potatoes was flawed. “My understanding is that there were only six animals in each control group, so statistical significance is pretty weak there.” In addition, he states that Pusztai did not go through the basic safety processes. “The premise of biotech safety in virtually every country that allows these things is something called substantial equivalence. You compare a genetically modified potato to a non-genetically modified potato against a whole bunch of parameters on stuff they contain. And essentially if it doesn’t cause any physiological or physiochemical differences in the potato, they’re deemed to be substantively equivalent, which means that they are pretty much the same with the exception of the protein that’s expressed in the genetically modified one. …Now the ironic part is that Pusztai, when he did his test, never analyzed the potatoes for substantial equivalence. And in fact there is very good evidence that snowdrop lectin [used in the study] will actually—the protein itself, will change the physiology of that potato where it would not meet the standards of substantial equivalence. So he’s testing a GM product that was never commercialized, that has never even been even through the most basic level of safety, with a poor study, that basically shows and basically came to the conclusion that all genetically modified crops have risks, when he hasn’t even done the basic tests that genetically modified crops go through before being approved.”
In 1997, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were hired by Fox Television as the researchers and stars of a new investigative news show, called The Investigators. Akre says they were told, “Do any stories you want. Ask tough questions and get answers.” One of the first stories they proposed was an expose on Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone, rBST, also known as Posilac. Their investigation revealed that Canada refused to approve Posilac, citing health concerns, that Posilac was linked to cancer, and that the FDA had rubberstamped the product without proper testing.
While Monsanto’s publicity stated, “Posilac is the single most tested new product in history,” Wilson and Akre’s investigation revealed that the longest test Monsanto had done for human toxicity was for 90 days on 30 rats.
Legal threats from Monsanto prompted Fox to kill the story and set in motion a chain of events that resulting in Fox firing Steve Wilson and Jane Akre for insubordination after several attempts failed to convince them to kill the story, re-write the story, or out and out lie about its contents. Fox even attempted to bribe the pair, offering them the rest of a year’s salary in exchange for their silence about the story and Fox’s part in it.
Brad Mitchell stated, “We would still contend that Monsanto [rBST] is a safe product. The FDA would support us on that. It’s still being used, albeit by a different company.”
Mitchell also tells us recent Internet rumors that Monsanto was opposed to or tried to prevent the labeling of milk as rBST free were absolutely untrue.
What we were trying to prevent was misleading labeling of milk as being rBST free. And many of the milk companies out there who were labeling it were doing so in a way that was in violation of FDA guidelines and made it basically sound like our product wasn’t safe, and the scientific consensus, at least in this country, was that it is.
“You know, we obviously would prefer that it wasn’t labeled that way, but our gripe was not against people who were labeling milk as rBST free; our real concern was people who were labeling it in opposition to what FDA guidelines set. And the vast majority of the state legislation and the things you saw really were just forcing milk labelers to label in accordance to those guidelines.
“I’ll give you an example, where some milk labels said it’s hormone free. Well, no milk is hormone free. It’s just misleading to say so. Now, if you want to say it’s rBST free, that’s better. What the FDA suggested was that it says this milk comes from cows not treated with rBST. Obviously we would prefer that people didn’t put that in writing and that people didn’t see a problem with our products. But if they were labeling milk accurately, we would not have had an issue with them.”
This company Highlight is continued in our next issue. Click to readMonsanto Company Profile Part II, Monsanto’s Turn. We will discuss Monsanto’s stand on patent infringement lawsuits and high yield potentials of GM crops, Europe’s attitude toward GMOs, and more.
As a mom of three young children, I think mothers lead the pack when it comes to excessive consumption. Just look at what we buy! Moms, I promise you, your children will not shrivel up and dehydrate if they don’t have a drink every 15 minutes– enough with the juiceboxes! In fact, drop the juice addiction altogether. Water’s what they really need. And the prepackaged snacks? Even the organic kind? Not healthy! You know what’s healthy and sustainable? An apple. From a tree.
I brought a whole new consumption awareness with me to the grocery store. I now buy very little that comes in plastic packaging. Kids need snacks for lunch? It’s raw fruits and veggies all the way… and I put the produce in my own canvas bags, not the plastic produce bags. We didn’t produce a lot of garbage before I went hardcore on my grocery habits, but now we use one small bag and it takes two weeks to fill it. So next time you go grocery shopping, ask yourself, “Do I really need this? Does the nutritional content of this product warrant its packaging?”
What about the toys and the clothes slick marketing schemes try to brainwash us into believing we need? What does that new baby really need? I promise you, the latest Pack and Play Portable Playard or the Fisher-Price Power Plus Swing and all the other crap that sits in a landfill six months after we bought it can’t be considered a necessity.
What about the brand new baby clothes dipped in flame retardant? Do you really want that stuff on your baby? My last child was born in June. I went to the Salvation Army and bought a bunch of onesies. It was hot. That was all she needed. The only other thing I bought was an Ergo (a baby carrier). That’s it. You don’t NEED all the plastic junk and the brand new clothes that you’re led to believe you can’t do without. All our babies need is a boob and a means to be tied to us—nothing more, nothing less.
The next time you get the impulse to buy something for your child, stop and think. Is your need just to connect? Do something with your child instead. Give your child your time, not more stuff. You’ll both feel more fulfilled.