Dumpster Diving Research Paper

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Recommended: On Dumpster Diving

Jeremy Seifert writes, directs and produces an award winning documentary, Dive! Although dumpster diving has become popular lately, Many people still wince at the idea of sifting food from dumpsters. However the purpose is not to encourage dumpster-diving but to address the bigger issue of food waste in the U.S.
The amount of food waste produced by American grocery chains, a conversation piece that's as charming as it is enlightening. “Every year in America we throw away 96 billion pounds of food”. It is believed that this amount of food that’s being wasted every year in U.S can feed a whole country “Haiti” for 5 or more years. Also The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1996 that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could

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    The reader learned about what exactly one would eat or wouldn’t eat while taking a dive in a dumpster. “Raw fruits and vegetables with intact skins seem perfectly safe to me” and “For myself, I avoid the game, poultry, pork and egg-based foods, whether I find them raw or cooked.” are examples that prove his experience with dumpster diving. He explains how negligent college students are when he inspects their garbage. “A typical discard is half a jar of peanut butter. In fact, non-organic peanut butter does not require refrigeration and is unlikely to spoil in any reasonable time.” (Eighner 676) Since college students live on “Daddy’s money” they throw away what could be valuable to another, the peanut

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    There are plenty of articles that discuss in great detail the conditions and many aspects of dumpster diving, but there is a fundamental difference between diving for survival and diving for profit. Lars Eighner, the author of “On Dumpster Diving”, tells stories of multiple instances of his dumpster diving experience. Eighner also explains exactly what it’s like to be homeless and to rely on scavenging through garbage to survive in order to get your next meal. On the other hand, in the article “Dumpster Divers: Scavenging is About More Than the Trash” by Elana Dure, she discusses that dumpster divers believe to think they are scavenging for treasure, not just for pleasure and enjoyment, but for profit. Both are “making a living”, but one group

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  • On Dumpster Diving Essay

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    Didion and Eighner have different styles of writing, but they both created writings with an instructional component. In both pieces of literature, they guide the audience like a mother to child, guiding us step by step in order to perfect the outcome. Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” teaches the reader on how to keep note of the past through a notebook. “On Dumpster Diving” written by Lars Eighner, teaches the reader how to successfully dumpster dive and survive. However, Eighner’s piece included many details, whereas Didion’s ideas used examples by flowing from one top to another. It could also be said that Lars Eighner’s piece creates a more thorough analysis on how to dumpster dive. In spite of the fact that the pieces of literature

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  • Rhetorical Analysis On Dumpster Diving

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  • A Critique Of On Dumpster Diving By Lars Eighner

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    According to Mayberry (2009) Lars Eighner, a graduate of the University of Texas, became homeless in 1988 and again in 1995 (p. 351). Some of the accounts from Travels with Lisbeth (1993), a book by Lars Eighner, depicted what he went through and what he found during his homeless state. A homeless person must eat and sleep but may not know where or when this might happen next. The human will to survive enabled Eighner to eat food from a dumpster, reach out to other for handouts, and sleep in places other than a bed with covers.

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    Eighner writes, “Long before I began Dumpster diving I was impressed with Dumpsters, enough so that I wrote the Merriam research service to discover what I could about the world “Dumpster”. I learned from them that “Dumpster” is a proprietary word belonging to the Dempsey Dumpster company.” He was so fascinated with Dumpsters, that he learned the definition, which is a fact. A definition can be adjusted; however, it is not completely revised. Definitions are definite. Eighner states, “Eating from the Dumpsters involves three principles: using the senses and common sense to evaluate the condition of the found materials, knowing the Dumpsters of a given area and checking them regularly, and seeking always to answer the question, ‘Why was this discarded?’” He uses his senses to analyze the condition of the things he finds logically. Dumpster diving requires the ability to critically think about what can and can not be

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    A) Lars Eighner, in “On Dumpster Diving”, portrays the waste that is accumulated due to modern consumerism and materialism. He also demonstrates the issue of the wage gap. Consumers of the modern age spend too much and therefore waste too much. In the essay, Eighner describes life as an scavenger and demonstrates how people are able to live by the minimal resources. “Scavengers” are able to survive on the waste of the consumer. Eighner presents this scenario as a contrast to the life of a modern consumer, in order to portray it’s unnecessary wastefulness. Mainly, food seems to be taken lightly by society, as Eighner as a scavenger finds “a half jar of peanut butter”,

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