Grad students are thrifty out of necessity, poaching street furniture and scouring campus message boards for events with free pizza. In the past several years I have embraced this lifestyle as a holistic life philosophy, expanding on my age group’s environmental/anti-consumerist orthodoxy.

This ethos of minimal waste and maximal resourcefulness is sometimes referred to as “freeganism” but I would include as fellow travellers and inspiration DIYers, life hackers, and found-object artists of all stripes. These various pursuits are not always overtly political, nor necessarily undertaken for profit, but I believe they have tremendous potential in generating financial and social capital that can be immediately reinvested in the communities from which they spring. Strategic coordination can turn such activities into flashmobs, problem-solving “hackathons”, or instances of “proactivism” that can raise awareness of their social/psychological benefits, as well as funds to ensure their continuity and expansion.

However, the struggle to put food on the table paradoxically keeps both young urban professionals and urban poor who have the desire, if not the skills, from engaging in these types of sustaining and liberating creative endeavors. Systemic factors and the pace of life in the developed world lead to a tremendous amount of waste — a quarter to a third of all edible food, according to some measures.  This translates to a pound of food per day for every American, as many as two-thirds of whom are obese.

A late 2008 New York Times piece summarized the situation well: “For decades, wasting food has fallen into the category of things that everyone knows is a bad idea but that few do anything about, sort of like speeding and reapplying sunscreen.” Despite passage of the Good Samaritan Act protecting companies who donate from lawsuits, the economic downturn has seen food donations halved just as need has grown.

What if wasted food could be used to address both problems: hunger and more figurative fulfillment? Here, I present one strategy to solidify the diffuse “freegan” ethos into a movement whose critical mass will inspire others to claim food, transportation, and energy independence, all while benefitting those who, worried about survival, do not have the luxury lifestyle choice. The project entails:

1. Collection of materials and organization of labor to build “stokewagons”— biked-pulled trailers to facilitate and amplify freegan harvesting activities (we could also call them “de-trailers”, or “re-trailers” from “DIY” or “recycled” trailers). These would also be used to build and expand a “found fleet” of rehabilitated abandoned bikes (“frankenbikes”).

2. Delegation of frankenbikes and stokewagons and nightly runs to volunteer “dumpster drivers” from existing food rescue organizations

3. Coordination of processing, storing/preserving, and distribution of harvest among these and other organizations

4. Kickoff a series of monthly “gotlucks” that share meals made after our good luck harvesting with the community for a small donation

5. Send these cash donations to donor-nominated organizations that do not already benefit from food donations

6. Disseminate knowledge and materials for urban foraging, cultivation, preservation, barter economies, and income generation to promote food independence among the patrons of those organizations.

Declaring food independence gives one the empowerment that comes with learning and sharing techniques to grow and preserve nutrient-rich food. It also satisfies the feeling of helpless many of us have by actively intervening in our food system at the points where waste regularly occurs or where resources are otherwise underutilized. This can be as simple as cleaning someone else’s plate, taking home excess from catered events, or making use of others' perishables when they are leaving town, to more proactive steps like foraging wild edibles, gleaning fields, planting on derelict land, or that practice commonly known as "dumpster diving."

Many people are surprised to find that an admittedly unsavory-sounding “dive” does not consist in swimming or stepping through loose garbage. It simply entails a late-night trip to the back of your local grocery store to move bag after bag of perfectly good food from in-and-around the disposal area to a car until it’s filled to the roof. There is always such abundance on my monthly trips that I quickly eliminated grocery shopping from my routine entirely, saving not just money, but time. In fact, the bounty was such that I have been compelled to find opportunities to distribute excess edibles, (with full disclosure of the food’s origin, of course), in raw, cooked, or fermented form, individually, at potlucks, and food drives.

My abhorrence of waste and determination to “stop the bleeding” in our painfully wasteful food system serendipitously became an opportunity to meet neighbors, food donation program-organizers, enthusiasts, activists, advocates, and policy-makers, as well as advertise other aspects of the freegan lifestyle and philosophy in the process! I have found that any initial distaste with which it is greeted usually dissipates, with skeptics frequently ending up on my list of diving partners (“synchronized skimming”)!

My hope elements of this model expand to include other locales, pairing members the bike and food community like a well-planned “prix-fixie” menu and providing partners for other forms of activism. Voila!

By undertaking small steps such as these, we can collectively transform a culture that condones wastefulness to a more mindful, just, and sustainable global community.

Follow Abram on Twitter @PhDJ