Masters of free lunch

They eat food from skips, wear discarded clothes and want to topple capitalism. Brian O'Connellmeets the 'freegans'

'We estimate that 90 per cent of what we eat comes from bins," says Alf Montagu. "The rest we buy or are given." For the past two weeks, Montagu and his friend Martin Silla have spent just £72 (€106) between them. That's including food, heat, accommodation and bills - an impressive outlay, especially when you consider that they both live in central London. They're staying in a flat they've been given free of charge, having just returned from a spell in Ireland. Situated next to them is an Iceland food store and at night, the pair gain access to the back of the site and help themselves to produce left in skips. They say they have more food than they could ever possibly eat, so they've decided to host a dinner party and share their spoils.

"We've collected a colossal amount of food over the last four or five days," says Silla. "In the skip there is bags and bags of stuff from meats to cheeses and boxes of chocolates. Most of it was in its packaging and left in the bins in large transparent bags. We love the party aspect of our life, getting together with people and having fun spending as little money as possible."

THE DUO WON'T elaborate on their exact location for fear of provoking the ire of their local supermarket chiefs. They try to use common sense when salvaging produce - never reclaiming fish, for example, for fear of poisoning. "If the food looks and smells fine, then we go for it. With fish, there's a lot more risk. We also take some simple precautions like wiping the packaging with bleach or washing the produce carefully. I haven't been sick once in the last five years," Montagu says.

From time to time they are confronted by members of the police force, but claim that authorities are often sympathetic to their nocturnal foraging. "We never break locks, and always leave an area as we find it," says Montagu. "On some occasions the police get involved and sometimes give us a slap on the wrist. Mostly we reason it out with them." The pair can't remember the last time they went clothes shopping, although Martin thinks he may have bought a pair of boots six months ago. Usually friends give them clothes or often they'll find large bags of unwanted clothing. It's amazing what people throw out, they say.

Montagu and Silla are part of an international movement known as "freegans", a combination of the words free and vegan, whose aim is to live as non-commercially as possibly. While the idea of frugal living has been around for centuries, this current wave of devotees has organised itself to the extent that an international movement is beginning to emerge.

Freeganism has its roots in traditional activities such as gleaning, or historical collectives such as the Diggers, a group of agrarian communists who flourished in mid-17th-century England. In the 1960s, there was much experimentation with free shops and "skip diving", yet the first official use of the word "freegan" appeared in 2000 and began to gain popularity through a website, Freegan.info, set up in New York by Adam Weissman and Wendy Scher in 2003.

Both were activists on environmental and animal rights issues and wanted to group all the existing freegan information and resources available.

Speaking from his New York base, co-founder Weissman is quick to dispel the notion that the movement is his brainchild, preferring instead to emphasise the collective nature of the society. "First, to clear up a misconception. We did not begin the freegan movement," says Weissman. "Not even close.

"Freegan.info is simply an organisation that exists to promote freeganism and to teach people how to live as freegans. The term freegan goes back to, I think, the 1980s, and the practices and ideas it refers to are even older." Freeganism has become something of a hip collective in New York, with both Village Voiceand Time Outpublicising freegan events, and a Newsweekjournalist currently blogging her experience of adopting the freegan life for a month. Forget sushi and sangrias, then - skips are where it's at.

"The main concern of the movement is a shift away from capitalism," says Weissman. "It has resonated around the world with people who love community, cooperation, and our planet. We believe that the survival of life on this planet requires a shift to the replacement of industrialism, capitalism, and globalism with a society that consumes less and shares more, where communities are self-sustaining and based on ecologically respectful relationships with our local ecosystem."

For Weissman, the path to a freegan life came about as a result of his concern for animal rights, which led to an exploration of ancient societies and their methods of existence. "I became freegan out of a recognition that agriculture, even when practised by local, organic farmers, involved a great deal of violence to animals," he says.

"I realised that I could not defend a profit-driven commodities economy to create foods in a way that prioritised compassion for animals over production efficiency. I came to see foragers - so-called 'primitive' societies that predated the shift towards hunting and agriculture - as the best model for equitable, cooperative, societies where people respected animals, the earth, and each other. The website sprung from there."

Back in central London, Montagu and Silla are happy to speak about their recent experiences living the freegan life in Ireland. For any aspiring freegans out there, though, their assessment of Ireland's skips makes for bleak reading. "We had a wonderful time in Ireland. We did do some bin raiding, but found it hard to find any accessible bins. We did, though, find a lot of people sharing with us along the way in inspiring ways."

For freegans, the key is that if you are open with people, the freegan way of life can manifest itself in a variety of situations.

"We stopped in Ballymena and were interested in alternative fuels so found a garage offering biodiesel," says Montagu. "The guy was very friendly and spent about an hour talking about alternative sources of energy. We talked a bit about our lifestyle with him and he seemed impressed. Just as we were leaving, he called us back and offered to fill up our van for free. That's something quite rare, but there are some genuine people out there."

WHEN NOT FORAGING, the pair hand out leaflets on their travels, promoting their way of life and encouraging others to do likewise. They don't believe in working for money, usually they volunteer for community-based projects wherever they find them.

"Another time in Ireland, I think it was outside Dublin, we were handing out flyers and we met this woman who liked what we were saying," says Montagu. "So much so in fact that she invited us back to her family home for dinner. We met her husband and her daughter and had a wonderful meal, and they also gave us lots of free stuff."

Despite the huge socio-economic changes in Ireland in recent years, Montagu says he still found people willing to open up to them and share their wares. While freeganism has yet to take root whole scale in this country, both feel it's only a matter of time before we're donning disposable gloves and rifling through skips.

"I think there's a deep-rooted sense of community in Ireland, and the majority of people there want to help you out," says Montagu. "Even if you ask for directions people are more willing to stop what they're doing and give you time. That's certainly not the case in London. I see no reason why freeganism can't take hold in Ireland: in fact, I'd be very surprised if it didn't."