A Year Without Buying Groceries

It started without us even realizing what was happening. Our fridge was so full we were scared half of it would go to waste. We had to make a detailed inventory of what we had. 5 bags of pre-made salad, 2 bags of butternut squash, too many apples to count, bread for a month.

“Oh Wow!” All of this food, once destined for the landfill, found its way into our fridge. Goodbye grocery shopping.

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My Uncle Tommy and I are freegans. Free-vegans if you want to be specific. This means we eat (almost) any food going to waste, and if we have to buy food (a rare occurrence), we buy vegan.

It started in Portugal at the beginning of a backpacking trip in September of 2015. We were in the kitchen of EdenHouse, a hostel in Porto, when we met a couple of Australians who told us about free bins in hostels. At most hostels, there is a communal kitchen with a fridge for travelers to put their groceries. When guests check out, there are bins for dry and perishable goods to leave behind what they can’t or don’t want to finish. These bins are labeled “Free” for anybody to use. The Australians said half-jokingly, “Yeah mates, you could probably come close to eating for free when you travel.”I looked at my uncle, “Oh wow!”

After a month of free bin scrounging, we turned it up a notch. We realized that there is food beyond the free bin that is going to waste. It’s standard at hostels to write your name and checkout date on your grocery bag so the staff knows when they can safely throw out food. For example, a bag would say “Joe, Sep 21.” If it was September 22nd, then it was fair game. Gone.

Sadly, many travelers overshop or are too lazy to clean out their items when they leave. Happily, my Uncle has a Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. in getting things out of his sight.

We became obsessed. Every time we arrived at a hostel, the first thing we did was to check out the fridge situation.  Were there items in there going to waste or would we have to go out and buy groceries? We meticulously inspected all of the contents in the fridge, which we call, “Torching.” There is a thorough process that we use to properly to torch a fridge and it quickly became one of our favorite pastimes.

We won 3 torching championships during our travels. That is, we stayed in a city and paid zero dollars for food. Dublin, Ireland: 4 days, $0 on food. Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica: 7 days, $0 on food. Valladolid, Mexico: 2 days, $0 on food. A historic 3-peat. Freddy Freegan was born.

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Around 4 months into our journey, we serendipitously found ourselves working on a sustainable, vegan farm. It was a transformational, life-changing experience wrapped into 2 infinite weeks. The feeling of eating so pure and clean was incredible. We have still never felt as amazing both physically and mentally while we were there. We began to only buy vegan.

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But we were addicted to torching. We couldn’t helplessly watch food go to waste, even if it was non-vegan. So we established our philosophy: we’d only buy vegan, but we’d eat anything that was going to waste.

The thinking was that if we ate food that was going to waste, it would prevent us from going out and buying groceries.  Thus, lowering food demand as a whole and making the world more sustainable. Even if we bought vegan groceries instead of eating the “waste”, we would be consuming hours of potentially exploited labor, gallons of water, gallons of oil, and plastic packaging that went into to making that food. We decided to call ourselves “Wastetarians.” We eventually learned that there were others like us, and they were called Freegans.

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From the perspective of torching, it was sad when our trip ended because this meant we wouldn’t have fridges to torch back in the working world. We’d have to buy groceries. Or so we thought.

We were wrong.

After moving into an apartment in October of 2016, we slowly gained our footing. We bought groceries once in October and once in November. Little did we know that November 5th would be the last time we did that for a long, long time. “Remember, remember the 5th of November.”

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Our first source of food came from Friday Fridge cleanouts at one of our offices. There was a rule posted on the fridges that any overdue guests in the fridge would be cleaned out Friday at 5pm. The sign was impossible to miss. When I saw this, I nearly fainted. I asked the building manager responsible for cleaning out the fridge if I could take the food that she was going to throw out. Seeing no reason why this would be a big deal, and more disgusted than anything, she agreed. It became my favorite Friday tradition. The haul from this varied, as it always does, but it was generally enough to last us the weekend. It was always a fun rush of not knowing what would be on the weekend’s menu.

One way or another, we started to garbage pick. When you see a pizza box dangling, almost tauntingly, out of a garbage can, a freegan can only show so much restraint. It was astonishing how much food we could find in the trash, much of which wasn’t even open! Do our neighbors like throwing away money? What was going on?

At first we only grabbed food at the top of garbage cans, food that was easily accessible. But we soon lost all fear and began ripping plastic garbage bags open. We were already in there; at this point there was no turning back. People often think it’s pretty gross, and sometimes it is, but it’s not as gross as you think. It was around this time that we started to think that we may be able to keep this going for a long, long time.

The more we torched, the better we got. We started finding more and more ways to salvage food. One of our favorite times was finding an open box of cookies on the side of a bike lane that was open, with several of the cookies still in the box. The box had probably fallen off someone’s bike and they thought they were bad because they hit the ground. Their laziness was our reward. We parked our bikes and ate the cookies right there on the side of the road, basking in the glory. Can you say tasty?

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We continued to find more and more ways to torch. We brought leftover food from work events that the caterers were going to throw out. Having a party? We’ll clean it up. If there was food going to waste, we got it out of our sight.

Two or three months had passed and it became apparent to us that we were on a streak of not buying groceries. We found a box of 168 sausages that we ate every single day for breakfast in February. We created an inventory system. It was getting to the point where all food we had in our house was food that we found.

Around 5 months had passed since we had bought groceries and supplies were running low. In a span of a week we were able to come away with massive hauls and we blew right past that milestone. When it rains it pours. Once we hit 6 months, we felt confident we could go a year (or forever) without buying groceries. We hit another hiccup at 10 months but at this point we were confident and determined to make a year.

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Around that time, we started thinking about what the diet was like and began pondering if it made sense to eat everything we found. Although the Freegan diet tended to be largely vegan and healthy (for our standards), we were still eating certain things that weren’t the best for you. I had undertaken a personal research project around what constitutes a healthy diet and started to question more and more what we were eating. But that would be on hold as we were determined to reach a year.

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When we passed 10 months, we knew we had it. 2 months? Psh. Nothing. We went from thinking 2 months at the start was impressive to thinking of 2 months was a breeze. And sure enough, we reached a year. Our 1 year Uncleversary wasn’t celebrated with an expensive meal. It was celebrated with eating a ton of food that was saved from a soccer party.

In the moment, reaching one year didn’t feel extra special. When you’re a freegan, every day is special. It was another day in the beautiful process. The joy is in eating a free meal every day. Another day, another dollar(s) saved. There’s always excitement in not knowing exactly what your next meal will be or where it will come from. It really makes you appreciate every meal.

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We didn’t want to eat out too much either because that would have felt like cheating. During that year, I ate out a total of 24 times, on average twice per month. I didn’t want to cheat it. But we surely could have done less. Socializing is an obvious need. Meals with friends or special occasions certainly warranted dining out.

One caveat – we did buy food occasionally for potlucks or dinner with friends. As much as we are willing to eat anything, we would never want to serve food that we found or garbage picked to friends (unless they knew in advance and agree). Even so, that was probably under 5 times, and we often could use canned or unopened food that we had found. Many of our friends tried food we torched and loved it. Some even adopted the lifestyle.

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But Freeganism isn’t about going a full year without buying groceries to say you did it. It isn’t just to save money on groceries. Far too much of what is made is thrown out when it’s deemed “damaged” “expired” or someone is just “bored” of eating the same thing. In the United States, 40% of food goes to waste.

For us, freeganism is more than just a hobby. It is a lifestyle. It has extended beyond food. Far too much of what is made goes to waste, or is sadly thrown out when somebody wants something new. We could talk about society’s fetish with the “new” all day. The newest phone, computers, etc. Everyone wants the shiny, new model when the model you have already works perfectly fine. It became ingrained in us that buying food (or anything new) is something that should be thought about really, really hard and avoided whenever possible. Buying out of necessity and out of want are two very different things.

With 40% of food going to waste in the U.S. alone, does it make sense to contribute to food demand? When we can find food for free, does it make sense to spend actual money for food? The answer to both of these questions is “Gone.” Back, back, back GONE.

We realize that this may be gross or uncomfortable for many people and/or might make some people think less of us. At the end of the day, we know in our hearts that we are doing the right thing. We never steal and don’t take anything unless we are sure it is going to waste. And we also believe that it’s worth sharing. We would never look down upon others for not being freegan, vegan, or for following any other diet. Our goal is to show others that there is another way to live and eat. A beautiful way. A way to lower our environmental impact, save money, and have a lot more adventure in your life.

My Uncle Tommy and I invite you to dive in and learn about all the ways we’ve torched food and how you can too. Let’s get it gone!

-Freddy