Dumpster divers are contributing a service by using what others throw away, but they forget that only because there is an affluent (free market) society, is there enough “trash” for them to raid.  Also,my own experience is that dumpsters are also gathering places and homes for rats, and maggots, and other assorted forms of life that are part of the dumpster scene. I assume they are selective about the food’s packaging and how fresh it is...but these are things glossed over in the film.

Thank you. What a great movie! It’s such a creative way to look at life outside of what we are fed mentally by our society and parents too.I think people are addictive creatures by nature and we have gotten hooked on the high of buying stuff. Maybe if we got hooked on more healthy behaviors more in line with our species we would be able to live a happier more artistic stress free life. Dumpster diving seems healthy and exciting to me. The thrill of the hunt! I think i’ll go now!

The film was an enjoyable view of someone else’s life, but I think they could have done better. I would have liked a little less of the long dramatic camera shots, silly dancing with the trash, etc, and more discussion about the bigger picture as well as the day-to-day of their project; how did they pick which dumpsters to go through?, did they have favorite dumpsters?, how selective were they about what they would keep? etc.

In the bigger picture, it didn’t provide any real substance. Throughout the movie I felt like they were skirting around an idea but never getting to the heart of what it was. They never seemed to follow the concepts through to a conclusion.

They presented dumpster diving as an alternative to a production/consumption oriented society, but it doesn’t make sense on it’s own. The ‘divers’ may not be consuming anything that isn’t already there, but they also aren’t producing anything of their own. The idea of scavenging presupposes that someone is overproducing and providing for them. In other words, they give the impression that they’re showing us how the whole world should be living, but it’s not actually possible because someone has to be the provider.

The scavenging lifestyle can exist ONLY in a world where there’s too much waste. So what are they proving? We already know that we have a waste problem, but dumpster diving does not provide a solution to it.

They also repeatedly referred to themselves as “recycling” the stuff they took from the trash, but they aren’t. They’re reusing it, and there’s a huge difference. Almost everything in existence today will eventually become useless. When it does, it will end up in and landfill regardless of whether it has been reused once or a thousand times. Reusing things might delay the landfill, but doesn’t actually prevent it. Recycling, on the other hand, takes the raw material from a once-useless object and turns it into something new and useful. Aside from the inherent imperfections of the recycling process, this can essentially go on forever and prevent the object from ever going to a landfill. Reusing things is good, but it’s only a temporary fix.

Ultimately, I thought the film was interesting but failed to provide any functional solutions to the waste problem. Even if half the world got everything they need from the trash, it still wouldn’t change the problem of having too much trash in the first place.