MEET LYNN UBELL, A NYC FREEGAN

Today’s guest post is written by Lynn Ubell, a 57 year old mother, wife, and business owner of a catalog production and graphic design studio. She’s an entrepreneur at heart. She’s raised two sons and bought her own apartment as a single mother, and re-married 5 years ago to a wonderful man who actually wanted to marry a woman with children (she wasn’t going to let him get away). She has a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and a B.A. from Albion College in Albion, MI.

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Two years ago, I came home from an uninspiring day at the office. I was not in the mood to cook another thrown-together quickie meal. Food prices were starting to soar, I was buying less and could care less. I decided that we would go out or order in (very easy to do when you live in NYC and everything is just outside your front door). I put my feet on the coffee table and turned on the TV and watched an Oprah show that I had taped early that afternoon.

Lisa Ling did a special report on freegans. What the heck was that all about? I watched in horror, awe and disgust. How in the world do college educated, middle class, high achieving people have the gall to go into dumpsters and eat food from the garbage right here in NYC? They were going out in groups called trash tours. However, as I watched, what they were saying started to make sense to me. And the main thing I noticed, aside from keeping your carbon footprint down and all the “green” stuff, was that these people looked peaceful, purposeful, content and happy. That was something that I wasn’t feeling.

I wanted to show my husband and son but they would have no part of it. And I was explicitly instructed not to even think about dumpster diving for food.

Two months later, my husband’s entire department at work was given 30 days notice. “Ah ha, strike while the iron is hot” I thought! I went online and found a trash tour for that very evening and I announced to my family that I was going. They said, “We are not eating garbage.” I replied, “Do what you want, but we need to figure out how we are going to save money.” I did not want to raid our savings account, retirement funds or college funds.

Off I went into the night and when I came home, I was greeted at the door like kids greeting Santa Claus. I had mountains of food – eggs, milk, bread, fruits and vegetables. Everything was clean. My family calmed down and I was off to the races. I was a changed woman.

The next day I came home from work, literally running into the kitchen. I couldn’t wait to dive into my found food and start experimenting. My love for cooking was back!

As an exercise, I kept an Excel chart of what I was now spending in the grocery store to track the savings from dumpster diving. That was a no-brainer for me because my husband and I have been keeping a budget since we got married 5 years ago. It helps keep us organized and on target. I couldn’t wait to compare the pre-diving charts to the post diving charts. In the 1st year, we saved over $9,000.00. That allowed both of us to pay off our credit card debt in full. In the 2nd year, we started putting away even more money for my son’s college education. If my husband wasn’t hooked before, he was hooked when I showed him the evidence in black and white.

A curious thing happened; we started eating better. Before I started diving, our food budget was getting tighter and tighter. Now, we eat foods that are in season and not processed. We have fresh organic fruits and vegetables every day; multi-grain country bread, organic eggs, milk, butter and yogurt. As I got braver, I started to bring home meat, fish and poultry. I have found fresh coffee, all kinds of cheese, bagels, prepared food, ice cream (yep, still frozen) bacon, cold cuts, lox, tomato sauce, soup, yeast, chocolate candy and chocolate chips, flour, cat food, kitty litter, caviar, lobster tails. You name it; I’ve found it.

I know what you are thinking. How disgusting! What about dirt, disease and germs? First of all, I am very careful. I go by four simple rules and no one who has ever eaten my food has gotten sick.

1. Your nose knows. If it smells bad it is bad.
2. When in doubt, throw it out.
3. If the food is supposed to be cold and it’s cold when I find it, it is good to go.
4. If the food is supposed to be warm and it’s warm when I find it, it is good to go.

Now I am finding too much food. I leave behind more than I take. My diving buddies and I give food away to anyone who passes by us with a friendly comment. We invite everyone who is curious to join in. However, one thing that I have noticed is that you become “invisible” to a lot of people on the street. I don’t know how we can be invisible. All the food in NYC is on the street, under lampposts where everyone can see us. Many people see us and avoid us. I see the look in their eyes. It is a look of pity or disgust. Our diving makes them uncomfortable. I have gotten over the early feelings of shame that I had. There is nothing shameful in what I am doing. I am feeding my family and friends, lowering my carbon footprint and saving thousands of dollars while doing so.

Since I first started dumpster diving two years ago, I can’t pass a dumpster or a large clear plastic trash bag on the street at night without my heart racing and my curiosity getting the best of me. If my husband or son is with me, they will leave me and walk away. Although they reap the benefits of my after hour pursuits, they don’t want any part of the hunting or gathering.

My passion has changed peoples’ lives. One evening, on the way home from a baseball game, my son and I came across large bags outside our local store. He was mortified, but joined me in the dive. With baseball hat pulled down over his eyes and his collar hiked up as far as it would go, we found boxes and boxes of chocolate cookies. He actually enjoyed himself. When he started to apply to college, his essay was about dumpster diving for food with his mom and how it changed his life. He got accepted to every school to which he applied and was offered over $500,000.00 in scholarships and financial aid.

I took a college friend diving with me. She is a modern Annie Oakley from a small town in Ohio. She owns her own farm, hunts with a bow and arrow, can dress a deer in the field and cans fruits and vegetables all year long. When she returned home, the administrator of a local hospital became her diving cohort. Soon, they were gathering so much food from the dumpsters that they opened up a food pantry and gave away thousands of dollars worth of food to anyone who needed it.

I like to say that I’m changing lives one dumpster at a time.

GERALIN: Do you ever recover health and beauty products from your dumpster diving adventures?
LYNN: I have recovered cleaning products, band aids, soap and toothpaste, all of which I have used. Once I found boxes of Brita water filters. They were thrown out because the outside boxes were moldy. Inside, the filters were still in their protective, sealed sleeves. Since I don’t use Brita, I gave them to a friend who uses them. I found toilet paper but wouldn’t use it because it was open rolls and I just didn’t know where it had been.

GERALIN: When you have friends and family over for dinner, do you ‘come clean’ about your food sources?
LYNN: In the beginning, it depended on who I was having over. If it was just friends, I sometimes told them before we ate, sometimes after. I always got the same reaction: “What!!! Are you kidding me? This is great, can we come with you”? I have had clients over for dinner and didn’t tell them until recently when I “came out of the closet” about the TV show that I have in production. I saw their minds whirling and wondering if they had eaten garbage. I told them yes and surprisingly they were pleased and amused. I wasn’t going to tell my father or his wife but then my younger son showed them his college essay about diving with his mother and how it changed his life. So the cat was out of the bag. My father called and told me that if I had no money for food, I should have come to him. I was touched but that wasn’t the case at all.

GERALIN: Do you have any “dream destinations” where you’d like to go dumpster diving?
LYNN: When I went to Portland OR to visit one of my best friends and my oldest son who lives there, I wanted to take them diving. My friend had tried on her own but kept telling me that she couldn’t find any place to go. I was convinced that she just didn’t know how to do it and I would show her. So when I landed at the airport at about 11 PM during one visit, we headed off in search of dumpsters, only to find none. The next day, I took my son food shopping and asked the manager what the store did with the food that needed to be thrown out. She told me that all Portland stores composted their food. She then asked if I was one of those freegans from NY. I laughed and said yes.

Portland was a dream destination for me. I would like to go to England and France because there are big freegan movements there. I would also like to go to various cities in the US to teach people how do it, how to set up food pantries, etc.

GERALIN: Is there are part of you that feels good about not wasting food or is it more about you saving money on groceries?
LYNN: In the beginning it was 100% about saving money. Dumpster diving has changed how I look at the world. My family and I are more diligent about recycling and re-using (you know the envelopes that come with bills in the mail, plastic bags, food storage bags, aluminum foil etc). We do small things like re-use the same water glass for the entire day so we aren’t constantly running the dishwasher. We use the same cloth napkin all week. I bike to work more, we got rid of our car and use either public transportation or Zip Car if we need a car. When I used to go grocery shopping, I would end up throwing away so much unused food that had spoiled. Since diving, I hardly throw anything away.

GERALIN: Do you, personally, prefer to do this alone or with a group? Have you made any friends doing this?
LYNN: I have no problem going out alone because I usually end up meeting people that I know. However, I do have a diving buddy that I met on the first organized trash tour that I went on 2 yrs ago. Once I saw the lay of the land, I turned to her and asked her if she ever wanted to go out alone, to email me and we would get together. Now we check in with each other on a weekly basis. If either of us have gone out without the other and we got something that we know the other person likes or needs we keep it until we arrange to meet up. We are always exchanging food.

GERALIN: Where can people go to learn more about dumpster tours in different cities?
LYNN: There is a web site called meetup.com. If you put into the keyword search freegan or trash tours in a specific city and that city has a freegan movement, it should give you all the info.

Want to get in touch with Lynn? Here’s how:

Lynn Ubell
lynnubell@nyc.rr.com
Twitter: @FreeganDinner
FB: Bring What’s for Freegan Dinner to Reality TV
You Tube: http://tinyurl.com/2bd5zon
Blog: http://blog.whatsforfreegandinner.com/