On Legalities, Medical Issues and Safety:

There have been many legal issues within the realm of dumpster diving. There seems to be no consensus as to what is legal and what is not. Exhaustive searches yielded give no conclusive facts as to the legality of the physical diving. The only conclusion I could come too on my own was that it is illegal to trespass on private property, the actual act of dumpster diving is not illegal as far as I can understand. The most information I could come upon about this particular topic was in the media. There are very little peer-reviewed articles and official documentation.

People within the medical field also have concerns. There have been reports of people with lacerations and broken bones due to diving (Zera et al., 1986). This is a logical conclusion to what could potentially be a very dangerous way to obtain food and other discarded objects. I’m sure that not much care is taken to keep the dumpsters clean or free of broken glass and sharp metal pieces; as it is only garbage after all. As can be seen in the video, The Perennial Plate, freegans say they are less likely to get sick from their food as they are very careful in looking to make sure that it has not gone off, where as most people do not hesitate to pour up a bowl of cereal and milk without checking to see if it is off. Freegans also point out that a lot of the food they gather is in packaging and fruits and vegetables are washable. Sometimes even if one piece of fruit is gone off in a bag the entire thing is tossed in the dumpster, the rest is all in fact still good to eat.

Besides the legalities of the act the there are the social implications for private citizens. From media sources and even with personal discussions that I had there seems to be a concern for personal safety. Residents seem to believe that the people doing the dumpster diving will extract personal information from the garbage or intrude on their property. In fact most if not all freegans will not dig in personal garbage but much dumpster diving is done at large retail outlets. These concerns from private citizens could stem from are from personal information that may be available in corporate bins. Though this is largely unfounded as paper waste of that type is of little interest to freegans and is usually shredded first anyway. In the cyber age that we live in any small piece of personal information can be used to gain knowledge about us. Even though much of the recovered goods are food items from large dumpster and not personal trash bins if there are no laws against dumpster diving then there could be resulting issues.

In conclusion this is as mush a social and public awareness issue as it it is a legal or anti-consumer issue. What makes these people (wether it is "right" or "wrong") feel they have to go looking for food elsewhere. We should be looking at the issues surrounding this. Why is so much good food thrown out what can be done to reduce this and can the food be used in other ways? Is there a way to allow people to eat in a way that they feel is more sustainable and that will not cost them their savings to eat healthily. Perhaps we should be looking down into into the dumpsters instead of looking down on people who dive into them.