[Metalab] Umfrage zu Dumpster Diving

[Jay Vaughan]

Hi - I took the survey.

As a Dumpster Diver with decades of recycle, re-use and re-purpose under my belt, I find it highly disappointing - almost offensive - that the definition of Dumpster Diving is being changed by social activists with a limited scope to mean "for food" when it really means: "for anything".  Dumpster Diving for food is just a small, relatively insignificant aspect of the ethos of Dumpster Diving at large and I think this needs to be made clear to your friend.

Certainly, food is one thing you will find in the trash - but there are far, far more important (because: OIL DEBT) things being thrown away today that have absolutely no need to be thrown away, other than the fact that they are on the negative side of the brainwash of consumer culture.  I never take food from the dumpster because I provide my own fresh food as a personal lifestyle responsibility, but I always take perfectly working computers and other things with LARGE oil debts associated with them - every weekend, when I check the local dumpsters in my neighborhood, I see people throwing away absolutely functional devices for no reason other than consumer culture, and I often intercept people as they are throwing things away and engage them in a conversation to change their minds about how pathetic it is to be taking the HUGE oil-debt devices, and throwing them away into the environment, "just because its too slow now", and so on..

I didn't see a way to inform your friend of this detail, so maybe you can pass it on to her.  Re-defining Dumpster Diving, which has *always* been about recycling/reusing/re-purposing *ALL THINGS*, to only be about "wasted food" is an alteration of the term - like saying "Hackers" is only about people who try to steal data - and we all know that is not true.  The negative connotation of the association of the term as only being for food-scavenging is harming the Dumpster Diving ethos.  Food waste has a benign effect on the environment; Computer waste has a far worse effect, and therefore *this* is more important, in communicating about the Dumpster Diving ethos, than just food alone.

So please: make sure your friend understands she is doing all Dumpster Divers a huge disservice by making this only about "old food" because its not. "Old Food" definitely has an expiration point, defined by the poisons generated by entropy and decay of the universe, but "old food" does not kill the Earth - Computers and other highly useful items have a much longer shelf life than people are willing to admit to themselves, but when they are discarded for reasons of fashion or disinterest, the ecological crime is far, far greater.

Dumpster Diving is about un-doing the eco-crime of many people in society today of throwing away perfectly good computers, furniture, toys, and other goods which cost a LOT of Oil Debt to construct, and more Oil Debt to destroy, and that really do not need to be thrown away, and shouldn't be, and are only being thrown away because people are lazy or brainwashed about the operational ability of their ecologically expensive devices. 

Every single computer that was ever made is *STILL USEFUL* if you can find a User for it: chucking it into the rubbish just because one is too ignorant to find a User, or make it work, or because 'they changed their minds', is an ecological crime.  Its not just about food, which has a much more benign effect on the environment (other than it being inhumane to people who cannot provide their own food).

j.

On 22/07/2013, at 4:30 PM, Astrid Gruber <astrid.gruber at nunmehr.at> wrote:

> Da gibt es eine ganz liebe Frau die ihre Diplomarbeit ueber Dumpster Diving in Oesterreich schreibt.
> 
> Wer mag, dauert wirklich 1 Minute und nicht mehr:
> http://de.surveymonkey.com/s/7SN8RLK
> 
> und wird die gesetzliche Situation in .at stark beeinflussen.
> 
> Happy days
> Astrid
> 
> 
> Wieso an diese Liste? Wegen: "Raum und Infrastruktur für Wissensaustausch"
> 
> 
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> Metalab at lists.metalab.at
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;
--
Jay Vaughan