At the Munich airport I saw something I hadn’t seen before at any airport: gleaners or freegans or binners – people who moved through the pre-security part of the airport, rifling through trash cans to see if there was anything in there worth saving. In just a few minutes in one spot we saw three people come by and investigate our nearby can. The gentleman pictured above made his second pass a minute or two later. In addition to this atypical-at-an-airport behavior, these folks were all dressed – and conducted themselves – like travelers. They walked purposefully from zone to zone. Their clothes were clean and presentable while their bags for carrying whatever they scrounged were not unlike bags that we might carry on a trip. I wouldn’t have given them a second look if it hadn’t been for the act of putting a hand into a garbage can.
To what extent are they tolerated for not upsetting the real travelers by appearing “homeless?” What are the economics of factoring to- and from-the-airport travel into a day’s worth of garbage picking? On a continuum between substance-abuse/mental-illness driven homelessness and self-selected outsiders/off-the-grid types, where do these folks reside?
Tags: airport, camouflage, disguise, garbage, garbage picking, munich, noticing, refuse, trash
Maybe they are part of this research
http://bit.ly/c0Trvn
Comment by Larry Irons 06.14.10 @ 3:59 pmIn case you can’t see Larry’s link (it’s a post to the anthrodesign mailing list) – it’s about the Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage “We are inviting academic editorial contributors to a new reference work on consumption and waste, or the social science of garbage.”
Comment by Steve Portigal 06.14.10 @ 4:02 pmI spent some time enjoying Delores Park in San Francisco this weekend and I observed an impressive grass-roots effort at collecting all the recyclable debris being generating (which was ample). A small army, very distinct in dress, demeanor and level of ambition from those of us lounging and enjoying the sunshine, constantly scoured the hillside with large bags, collecting directly from the blanket-bound. At the bottom of the hill were rows of manned grocery carts neatly stacked with bottles and cans. Passers-by were thanked when they put their own bottles on the stacks. The whole system was incredibly organized; we wondered if different groups had divided the park into territories. It would have been a complete mess without their efforts.
Comment by Julie Norvaisas 06.14.10 @ 5:19 pmWow, that’s amazing. It’s something to think about, that these behaviors we don’t see are really tremendously deliberate and systematized, even if slightly beneath the surface.
Comment by Steve Portigal 06.14.10 @ 5:22 pmI could imagine people gleaning the items that get discarded as people go through security in the US and creating a little sub-economy.
Comment by Dan Soltzberg 06.15.10 @ 10:14 am