In times of crisis, Parisians take to scavenging

[katty]

more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5135E320090204?feedType=RSS&feedName=lifestyleMolt&rpc=22&sp=true

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters Life!) - It's closing time at a market in Belleville, a working-class neighborhood in Paris, and a young woman in a black parka and white cap is rummaging through the abandoned crates.
After a thorough inspection, she slips a cauliflower and some slightly squashed oranges into her shopping bag.

"That's going to be my dinner," says the woman, who will only give her name as Yng.

Nearby, an old man with a black beret selects two mangoes from the bottom of a battered cardboard box. He earlier bought a bag of apples, then filled his basket with discarded fruit and vegetables.

"Glanage," or gleaning, is a French tradition that reaches back to the Middle Ages, when people would go over the fields after the harvest and gather any crops that remained.

But today, the practice is becoming more widespread in cities, in what charity workers and social activists describe as a sign of growing economic despair.

[notadmblnd]

1. In America, it's called dumpster diving

[Venceremos]

2. I'm a proud dumpster diver

We scavenge even in the best of times. Not food or actual smelly garbage, but construction items.

The stuff they throw away at construction sites is appalling. Perfectly good lumber, shingles, bricks, room sized pieces of brand new carpet, etc. We built a complete 8X6 shed out of construction site throw aways, and some of it was even in a dumpster.