Analyzing a Sub-culture: Dumpster Divers

One might think that someone who digs through dumpsters to find their dinner for the night has fallen on hard luck. But in fact, there exists a sub-culture which chooses to live off the waste of others even though they can afford to buy food. These people are called dumpster divers. They choose to buck the societal norm of buying food because of their disgust with the abundance of waste it causes. Despite their annoyance with the current system, instead of trying to effect a change, they reject the system completely. The essence of this subculture is the contradiction between their political activism and their anarchistic approach.

This subculture can be represented by a stale loaf of bread. At one point soft and flaky, it now sits hard and crusty, still wrapped in bright plastic packaging at the bottom of the bin. Many people who can’t afford food, dream about getting their hands on this bread, but in our culture it sits unwanted, waiting for the dumpster truck. This bread represents the waste that dumpster divers are disgusted by.

However, it’s ironic that the dumpster divers are living off of something that they’re disgusted by. Without other people wasting food, dumpster divers wouldn’t have food to survive. The bread as an artifact represents this. Even a food as simple as bread has gone through many levels of production to become waste for them to eat. The grain is grown on a farm, and then ground into flour at a mill, and baked into bread and then wrapped in plastic that was processed from oil into plastic. The point being that a lot of work from many different parts of society has gone into producing this bread. So despite rejecting societal norms dumpster divers live off the production of society. And perhaps, this is exactly their point. Because without dumpster divers, a loaf of bread which has taken so many resources and so much labor to produce would go to waste.

But the fact that they’re living off of society’s excess despite rejecting societal norm indicates a contradiction. The reason they choose to dumpster dive is because our current modes of production, and love of commercialism produce an extreme amount of waste. This isn’t sustainable. The dumpster divers protest this unsustainable way of living but what their lifestyles are not sustainable either. Perhaps if we achieved the perfect ratio of dumpster divers to regular people we could eliminate waste. But that would only be within our country. There are many countries that don’t waste food and desperately need more food. Dumpster diving has a very narrow view. Maybe the problem should be approached from a global standpoint. What if the people who were concerned with waste, tried to effect a change that would make food distribution more even throughout the world?

In some ways the exclusive nature of dumpster diving is a characteristic of many subcultures. It wouldn’t feel special to be a part of the subculture if everyone could do it. If everyone dumpster dived there would be no waste to consume. Additionally it takes a certain type of person to eat food from a trash. Dumpster divers are usually brave and not at all squeamish. These could be unifying characteristics of the subculture, but theres more to it than that.

Joining a subculture is a way to differentiate yourself from the masses, but when it becomes more about just being different than the actual subculture, it can lose the original values that unified the subculture in the first place. My friend Claire used to be part of the dumpster diving subculture, but she eventually grew tired of their pretentious and contradictory philosophy. When she was working on a farm, many of the other people there were dumpster divers and she became one as well. But she realized that the people there were dumpster divers more as a way to be different and rebellious, rather than because they actually cared about waste. This particular segment of the subculture had separated from the values that started dumpster diving.

Dumpster divers reject consumer culture, but do they challenge it? Column writer Amelia Taylor-Hochberg writes: “Known as the willful reclaiming of disposed objects, dumpster diving is a conservationist and creative practice of reuse — a direct challenge to consumer material culture”. Some might disagree. Dumpster diver’s radical actions emphasize the amount of waste our society produces, but dumpster divers are on the fringes of society. Many people probably aren’t even aware that they exist. Additionally, their actions don’t do anything to change the current consumer culture. Dumpster divers reduce waste, but they don’t challenge the system. Instead they feed off of it.

Perhaps dumpster divers will become a necessary part of our world? Maybe they are like the decomposers from the food chain, but of the human world. Every system, whether natural or man made will produce waste and different mechanisms develop to deal with the waste. Using the natural world as a metaphor again, the dumpster divers have evolved because of the current environment. After mass production was invented in the 20th century, the US has become a society of rampant commercialism. This has increased waste greatly, and created an environment where dumpster divers evolved because they are disgusted by the waste. One could choose to see dumpster divers as necessary, now that we produce so much waste, and as a solution to the problem of waste.

Or waste could be addressed on a global level. Dumpster divers have identified a problem, but it’s not clear that dumpster diving is the solution. Its more of an act of protest and an extreme way to voice an opinion. It brings attention to an issue within our society, but is it a sustainable lifestyle? The essence of the dumpster diving subculture is being outspoken about the problem of waste in our society, but dumpster diving has started to lose that essence.