英语论文网

The Waste Land: How Activists in NYC Help Take a Chunk Out of the Big Apple’s Big Waste

Kopali. Tazo. Odwalla. Kashi. New! Terramazon. Pangea Organics. Himalania. ShiKai Botanics. The exotic brand names, the prices that match the airfare to exotic places, the faces and faces and faces of people herded in line to pay for their phyllo dough or Kombucha. Such is Whole Foods or Dean & Deluca, where Cindy Rosin, 30, a part-time elementary school teacher from Queens, does her weekly supermarket shuffle. Well, not at those stores, but outside of them, on the street, in their garbage.

“Anything that you see in a grocery store will eventually be out on a curb,” she says while out on a curb. It’s night and it’s cold and we are outside of the Whole Foods on 7th Ave. and 25th St. in Chelsea where we unwrap our Garbage Bag Surprise.

Rosin is the spokesperson and organizer for Freegan.info, an online community of anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist activists called freegans, who boycott the corporate world by spending as little money as possible, which often means scavenging food from the waste.

Almost half the total food in America gets placed in the trash, according to a study conducted by the University of Arizona. That includes food from restaurants, supermarkets, and households. Over 96 billion pounds of edible food will never fulfill its edible function. Every year, the US government will spend $1 billion dollars dumping useable food in landfills.

Freeganism, the supposed “antidote to consumption,” has grown in popularity and media interest since 1999, when its manifesto was written by Warren Oakes, an activist and drummer for the punk band Against Me!. Freegan.info runs fortnightly trash tours, where around 30 people meet up to scour New York for popular garbage drop spots – large grocery stores like Whole Foods or D’Agostino.

Americans are sick of the colossal waste, Rosin thinks, and how, according to the United Way of New York City, 400,000 people are categorized as underfed in NYC when a buffet rots on the streets every night. Even if only five percent of disposed food landed on the forks of the hungry, it would provide four million people with three hardy meals.

It’s true what Rosin says about the food, because as she and I open bag after bag of garbage –probably 20 or so bags – it becomes apparent how much sellable product grocery stores throw away. One bag contains golden delicious apples, salad mix, and other produce. Another contains boxes of powdered mashed potatoes a本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。