Obies Take Scavenging Culture to the Dumpster

Oberlin Review, 11/21/08
by DEA GOBLIRSCH
When recent Obie grads David Brown and Greg Mann moved into an unfurnished apartment in Berkeley, California with no more than the clothes on their backs and camera equipment, they anticipated a struggle. What they got instead was stuff, and lots of it. Within a few weeks, they had not only food, clothing and mattresses to sleep on but also a neon Budweiser Beer sign and a shelf overflowing with books. These treasures didn't come from stores or yard sales, but from dumpsters. Brown and Mann were conducting an experiment: attempting to live solely on scavenged goods for three months.

The resulting feature-length documentary, i Love Trash, was conceived as a way to publicize dumpster diving. Also called dumpstering or skally-wagging, diving is premised on the idea that our capitalist society produces vast amounts of still-usable trash that is free for the taking. In the United States alone, 236 million tons of garbage is thrown away annually.

The film is low-tech and sometimes veers dangerously close to an art school project, with choreographed trash dances and a scene in which Mann, Brown and two friends re-enact an imagined pre-historic hunt, their arrows pointed toward a dumpster rather than a wooly mammoth. These parts simply distract from an otherwise poignant documentary based on solid research, a multiplicity of voices and Mann and Brown's spirited adventures. While many of their interviewees are college-aged bohemians, the face time i Love Trash gives to older divers shows that dumpstering can outlive youthful leftism to become a sustainable way of life. One man speaks of supporting thirteen of his own children by dumpster diving for fifteen years. Local artist Skip Schuckman builds architecture primarily from scavenged sources, the purchased exceptions being the occasional can of paint or sheet of plastic. The piece our filmmakers visit is constructed leaning against a boulder, with its ceiling beams merging curved wood with scavenged machine parts.

The message of i Love Trash is driven home by the culminating scene, in which Brown and Mann hold a free sale to get rid of everything they've accrued before moving out of the apartment. "Shoppers" swarm in, including a recent divorcee in need of furnishings and a girl who is most excited about taking home the branch hanging on a wall. Others take dishware, button-up shirts and Brown's garbage art creations. These "worthless" goods that never meant to find their way out of dumpsters get a third chance at life.

Four years prior to making i Love Trash, David Brown started dumpster diving while a student at Oberlin. During a winter term trip between San Francisco and Seattle, he and his traveling companions began eating out of the garbage to cut food costs. When Brown realized just how much perfectly edible produce and bread was going to waste, he began supplementing his diet with scavenged foods and sharing them with others. He also began dumpstering for clothing and art supplies, even centering some of his school projects on recycled materials. Philosophically, Brown was interested in the anti-capitalist stance dumpster diving takes, as espoused in cut-and-paste punk zines.

In turn, Brown and his documentary inspired two current students, David Greenberg and Saul Alpert-Abrams, to eat solely dumpstered food during the week of October break. They had already been foraging for wild mushrooms and wanted to explore the urban side of scavenging. Greenberg considered their experiment a chance to see whether dumpstering would be a viable option in his future, when he didn't have access to food communities like OSCA. While Saul mentioned that they went several days of eating only produce and then several of only bread, he saw that as a lack of planning rather than a failure of the dumpster gods. It took them about fifteen minutes to collect food for the day -- about as long as it does to pile a plate at Stevenson Dining Hall. For Alpert-Abrams, dumpstering is also a philosophical act, and he refers to it as making a "negative-negative impact"-- subtracting from the wastefulness of throwing away vast quantities of usable food.

As i Love Trash makes its way to the Wild & Scenic Environmental, Frozen River and Lake Country film festivals, Mann and Brown's dumpster diving gospel will spread beyond their friends and acquaintances. Viewers from all walks of life will be able to virtually accompany them on their three-month adventure and dream up scavenging schemes of their own. It has already been shown in Oregon's Bend Film Festival and an Oberlin campus screening is pending, potentially spawning a new generation of members for the Independent Garbologists Association.