Hollywood actress does the discarded food scrap diet. Would you try it?
Academy Award winning actress Ellen Page (Inception, X-Men, Juno) took off to Oregon in between films to study more natural forms of living than what she found in the glitz and glam of Hollywood.
The young actress studied permaculture, design and eco village development at Lost Valley in Oregon, adopting the community’s freegan philosophy – the practice of salvaging discarded food, squatting, exchanging/sharing, and other methods of maintaining “free” living.
“[When you go experience something that completely flips everything on its head, [that is] a wild ride to go on. Then to walk back out into the world and society, you see things differently. I think that is something a lot of people are dealing with right now and it is hard to know if running away to the woods and becoming a freegan is the best choice, or do we stay in the infrastructure we’ve inherited and do our best to create positive change? I don’t necessarily know the answer.”
The experience also gave Ellen background and context for her new role in the film The East released in theatres on May 31, wherein she plays an active member of a group of environmental activists who live by an anarchist eco-code and target wasteful and corrupt corporate leaders.
Ellen Page with David SuzukiThe principles of freeganism involve practices around waste reclamation and minimization including “urban foraging” or as it’s more widely known, “dumpster diving”: the practice of recovering useable items from dumpsters or street curbs that have been needlessly discarded. Yes – this includes food. (Read more about food waste; here too.)
Freegans swap goods of all kinds and various resources to promote a life that does not rely on or become barred by the mainstream practice of exchanging currency.
“Freegans practice strategies for everyday living based on sharing resources, minimizing the detrimental impact of our consumption, and reducing and recovering waste and independence from the profit-driven economy. We are dismayed by the social and ecological costs of an economic model where profit is valued over the environment and human and animal rights.” –Freegan Info
Visit Freegan.Info for more information.
