About

I have an answer to consumer guilt.  Throw business as usual out the window!  There’s no need to say “I can’t afford to travel,” or “I can’t afford to eat well,” or “I can’t use products and admire and acquire things because I care about the planet,” or “I don’t want to bother making my home look nice since I cant afford fancy stuff,” or “I can’t save the world because I don’t want to be a stinky hippie.”  That said, I have no interest in dogma.  This is just about being conscious about things and using things creatively when appropriate.  It’s about being proud of innovation–saving resources where you can, so you can use resources where you can’t.

Contact: fairfax.wright@gmail.com

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Take a look at this handsome post on Superforest and read answers to questions posed to me by Jackson if you’re wanting more about fruganism.

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And here are my answers to some questions that another new pen pal asked me (some similar to what’s on Superforest):

What, if anything, has dumpster diving taught you about patterns of consumption in the USA, or at least in New York?

We have a lot of products.  So many.  All the time I’m seeing ones that I’ve never heard of or seen before, and perhaps, given that I’m finding them en masse in the trash, perhaps that there isn’t a huge need for.

On the most basic level, this lifestyle has taught me how wasteful people are.  Or more particularly, how wasteful our consumptive practices encourage people to be.  What I mean by that is that a confluence of very particular elements encourages a shopkeeper to chuck his overhead, it’s not happening just because he or she feels like taking the items of the self.

I find a ton of organic produce in the garbage.  The problem I’ve identified there is that as demand has risen for organic produce, people haven’t adjusted their aesthetic demands accordingly.  Every banana in Ecuador is smothered in brown spots.  And they are the best bananas in the world.   So as it turns out, sweet tasty organic bananas have brown spots.  But people don’t want that, so the stores cycle through shipments faster than they sell them.  On a side note, I see the heirloom tomato as a good example of something that has eschewed normal aesthetic requisites with great success.  They look wonky enough, that that can actually be used as their selling point, warty tumors, scabby crevices, and all.  I would like to encourage more of that.

There’s an interesting dynamic between price and waste as well.  People don’t realize that the price of an item reflects the waste.  For every one bagel you buy, you are paying for three to be baked, and two of those to then be thrown out.  That’s because when stand at the counter we want to see a plethora of bagels, not just many varieties, but a large quantity of each variety.  And so we want there to be a lot there, but we also want them to be hot and chewy and fresh.  So that large lot gets tossed with some frequency throughout the day, or if not, then certainly at the end of the day.

A market has to pay for their goods from the wholesaler, they have to pay for the goods to be shipped, they have to pay for someone to unpack them, someone to shelve them, they have to pay the rent for the square footage that they take up, the electricity that keeps the light shining on the boxes and the air conditioning cooling them, the prices tags and someone to label each item, then when they don’t sell them they have to pay for someone to take them off the shelves, someone to bag them and then they have to pay for someone to haul them away.  A lot of money has been spent on each item in the trash.  So in setting price points, a vendor will take that take these inefficiencies into consideration and inflate the prices accordingly.

A thousand dollar memory foam mattress.  A wooden bed frame with drawers in perfect condition that sells for at least a few hundred dollars.  But to be fair, people in NYC love furniture from the street (or at least those you have skirted the fear of bedbugs), so those two might have been taken by someone else.  Here is what wouldn’t have been because I found them in the depths of the dumpsters: printer/scanner/copier, fully functioning, with ink cartridges; computer monitor that I purchased a $7 cord for and now use as a second monitor when I do video editing; digital camera that I gave to my friend Andrew in Uganda; two textbooks that I sold on Amazon for $140…

Reading your blog, I am struck by the amount, the excess of what is being thrown away. Do you think this is a fair judgment? Is there enough that many people could be living the way you live or is there only enough to support a few? It seems that so much is being thrown away that you are quite literally forced to consume a lot… in order to waste as little as possible. You are compelled to take 5 boxes where maybe if you were shopping you would have made do with one, because otherwise those boxes will go to waste.

There is so much excess it nauseates me.  Many, many people could be living like this.  I leave a whole lot behind, and I only go once a week or so, and I only go to a few shops within my neighborhood.  So if you factor in every item, every day of the week at every store, the sum total would be enormous.  I just read something that said that 6 million tons of food products are dumped annually in California—enough to fill our giant sports stadium 35 times over.  However, due to our litigious society (and in many ways rightly so) I understand why a shop wouldn’t be inclined to put in the extra effort do transfer ownership of their perishables to someone who will make use of them.  So although of course I would like to see changes in infrastructure take place that would absorb this excess and somehow absolve the vendors from liability, before we even get to that point, there is a lot of room for improvement.

There is no reason for unopened, unblemished, fully functional whisks and spatulas and peelers and dish towels and cleaning supplies to be thrown out in the quantities that they are.  And then of course you have the problem of the universities and everything that gets tossed at the end of each school year, just to be purchased again by the next lot of students come fall.  And those are just the things I’ve witnessed.  If you also consider things coming out like the H&M clothing scandal, it’s just mind-blowing to consider how much utility is never tapped, but rather squashed in a landfill.

In certain respects, I do end up consuming more living this way.  It’s to the point where sometimes I won’t open a bag because I don’t want the culpability of knowing what’s inside.  I didn’t want to find 12 mayo-knives.  What will I do with 12 mayo-knives?  I now have to find a home for 11.

Do you consider what you do to be a sustainable way of living?

I would like to say no, in that I strive for the extinction of this way of living, but unfortunately I don’t see it happening any time soon.   But as far as personal choice, I don’t really see this particular method as something I will sustain.  It isn’t always going to be appropriate for me to procure my sustenance and belongings from dumpsters, if I move to a different city, have a family, there are many reasons why I won’t keep doing this.  But what is sustainable is my mindset of sustainability.  A resource consumption checklist will always scroll through my head before any transaction or activity.

Do you consider it to be a necessary way to live, or do you choose to live this way? Maybe a necessary choice, because if we all lived like this we would waste and consume less, and this is ultimately what we have to aim to do?

I consider a general awareness of consumption, on an individual and planetary scale, to be necessary—more necessary than ever.  I strongly believe that if we continue to consume, waste, and pollute as blindly as we have been, we will end up paying the price by way of an extreme deterioration of the very quality of life that our practices of consumption were meant to improve.  I have indeed noticed a sea change in attitude regarding environmentalism and sustainability, at least in the circles I run in on the east and west coast.  But even there, it largely means a shift to organics and the use of a canvas tote.  Behavioral shifts will need to be amplified greatly and promptly if we are to survive this mess we have gotten ourselves into.

Can you tell me a bit about your background and upbringing? Socio-economically speaking.

Bits of what I know call fruganism have been engrained in me since I was a wee lass sticking my nose in the air at the sight of my dad eating fruit well past its prime, explaining to my friends why our lawn looked like it was wearing a sweater (my dad rerouted the washer plumbing to water the grass, though we could have done with a better lint filter), attending every library book sale and garage sale in the neighborhood, taking our bottles and cans to the recycling center (my brother and I got to keep the cash), scouring thrift stores with my grandma and aunts—these were typical weekend activities.  That said, my dad is a successful physician.  It has never come out of dire monetary need, it has come out of a desire to be as little of a burden as possible on either the planet or my wallet, so that I can continue to reap sustained benefit from both the planet and my wallet.

Do domestic residences also yield up terrific bounty?

Oh yes, particularly at the end of the month when people are moving out.   That’s when there’s the greatest bounty.  Piles of dishes and bookcases and linens and beds dot the streets.  It seems to be one of the few sources of refuse in which a great percentage of the populous has partaken.   I really like that about New York—taking things from the street has really become a normative practice.  Everyone has their prized street possession, funny artwork, a great dresser, office chair, or something.  You see people at all hours of the day and night trotting home with their new finds.  That’s a good example I think of what a powerful effect the dismissal of a stigma can have.

Do you have particular sure-find treasure spots?

Yes.  Any supermarket on any day.  But if I need specific stuff, I know for example that the bagel shop always has bagels, one market tends to have more non-perishables, another more bread, another will always have basic produce like tomatoes and zucchini, and yet another has fancy produce like asparagus and artichokes, but requires far more of a search because there are many more bags.

Do you know many people who live this way? Is there a noticeable movement, or a significant number?

All of my friends engage in it in some way, either by actually going out with me or just by eating the food that I cook.  I also cooked like this for the cast and crew of the film that I just produced.  My mom and my brother dine with me when they are around.  I actually haven’t encountered anyone yet that has refused food.

But as far as people who do this on their own accord, I only know of people, like the freegans.  Sometimes I encounter other people at the trash too, like elderly people who seem like their pensions have run out, or slightly disheveled middle-aged writer types.  On rare occasions, I meet girls like me—who seem young and collegiate and like they have a roof over their heads,  and are doing this more as a personal choice than anything else.  One time I met a nice mom and her son who don’t really dumpster dive, but just get their bagels from the bagel bag that is outside the bagel shop every night.

What is the attitude of shop staff, or passers-by, to you? Do you find that you are inspiring them to think and act differently?

I’ve come across employees at most shops, and the occasion is very rare that they are anything less than friendly.  Besides maybe a quick comment to make sure you’ll close up the bags after, they really let you be.  It also helps that, at least with my neighborhood shop, I also purchase stuff there, so they know me as a customer as well.  If you engage with them, or even just make eye contact, it helps to personalize the situation, and take it beyond just the act of a random individual getting free stuff from a shopkeeper’s overhead.  I’m sure any shopkeeper is as adverse as I am to chucking goods he or she has paid for, and in throwing out the goods, he or she is really only keeping up with consumer demand.

Passersby either don’t notice or just give me a slightly funny look.  Or maybe it’s more of a double take when they notice my nice coat or my iPhone earbuds.  I’m obviously aware that I’m not a typical dumpster diver, although if you spend any time with a group like the Freegans, you’ll notice that even they are quite a varied bunch.  Nevertheless, of course there are certain stereotypes surrounding this kind of lifestyle, and while I do break the mold, it just serves to show that anybody can do this.  It’s as legal for me as anyone else.  That said, I’m not advocating for people to dumpster dive, it’s just what happens to work for me at this moment in my life.  What I am advocating for is for people to make conscious and conscientious decisions about their resources: time, capital, environment, and so on.

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Here is a thing that I wrote for this other silly thing if you’re somehow stuck wanting to hear more from me:

A green model shouldn’t be a model for green, but a model of green.

I have a strong familiarity with sustainability and the environment and they have become central tenets of my existence. I have lived and worked all over the world; I am multi-lingual; I have a degree in anthropology and film theory from a great university and have spent years studying sustainability and development, but more importantly, I live it. The term I developed for myself is frugan: of or relating to a frugal lifestyle, therein sparing with regard to the detriment of the wallet, the environment, the climate, society, and one’s general sense of well being. I believe that small inputs carefully instantiated can snowball into big effects, which is why no rooftop garden, bamboo camisole, zero-emissions film set, or solar iPhone charger is too small to warrant attention. I wear my solar backpack everywhere, even when I have nothing to charge, because having it be seen is the best way to disseminate a technology and product that I believe in. If someone compliments my wall color, I praise the glory of zero VOC paint. When I throw dinner parties, I am sure to share where the food came from, (likely my little garden, the local CSA, or the supermarket garbage bags).

I grew up with monthly excursions to the Santa Monica recycling center, regular plantings at Tree People, clean-ups with Heal the Bay, backpacking trips through the Sierra, and visits to every National Park in the west. But it was the petroleum explosion in the cloud forest of Ecuador when I was 18 that fueled my search for platforms through which to expose environmental and human right abuses. In college I studied methods of greening the urban economy. One of the central arguments in my anthropology thesis was that narrow expertise is crucial to sustainable development, but only insofar as there is someone in place to weave these specialized efforts into a network of functional tools. This is true far beyond the realm of academia and international affairs, stretching through entertainment, home improvement, and personal morale…it is the role to be filled by a green model.

There is a difference between prosthelytizing and sharing a way of life that works for you. I am of the opinion that people want to do good—going green does not have to entail learning to live without the niceties, it’s about finding sustainable alternatives. One way to do this is to tap into the power of a family heirloom—the story behind something. A meal tastes better when you know the name of the farmer who grew the ingredients; a necklace befits you when the price tag provides capital to a small business owner in Laos or Malawi. I used to be quite troubled by consumer guilt—I loved things, but I also loved the environment and I deemed the two incompatible. But they aren’t, it’s not about not buying, but buying better. Repurpose more, lower electricity usage (and the bill!), then use the money to invest in low-flow toilets. Instead of planting flowers and sod, plant vegetables and fruit trees— edible bounty! Build your infinity pool, but why not make it a natural pool, free of toxic chemicals.

People get into a rut of how things are done, instead of thinking how they could be done best. I recently produced a low budget feature and fed a cast/crew of twenty with mostly salvaged food. We cooked beforehand, and froze the food until we needed it. It was homemade, healthy, and delicious. We banned water bottles and instead used Brita filters I had reclaimed from the Columbia University dorms on move-out day. In lieu of bottled beverages, we made large batches of iced tea and coffee. Certainly this scenario wouldn’t work for all film sets, yet I think wiggle room for creative adaptation is highly underestimated.