On Dumpster Diving Essay

In the essay on Dumpster Diving we read about Lars Eighner Who is a scavenger in the sense that he searches dumpsters for leftover items that can be of aid to him to enable him to eat or to have clothing to wear. In this essay we see numerous rhetorical approaches to grab the reader’s attention in as he conveys a story and a lifestyle that sheds light to an unknown profession. We immediately read about how knowledgeable and passionate the author is about this subject as he comes out almost challenging the Marriam-Webster dictionary on if the word Dumpster should be capitalized or not.

When I read Mr. Eighner, someone who scavenged for food on a daily basis, and yet at the same time was able to challenge the most reputable dictionary I was confident in my choice for my paper His expertise was un-paralleled in that he could dictate exactly how to correctly and safely dumpster dive, and yet at the same time make you feel as if you were not reading an essay from someone who would have these types of personal experiences. In his writing he writes long enough on how to correctly evaluate the food found in dumpsters I felt as though if I were to be put on the streets tomorrow I would know what to do.

He says that there are three principles to eating out of a Dumpster. He dictates that the first one is to use the senses and common sense to assess the condition of the found materials the second is to know the Dumpsters of a given area and lastly to answer the question of “why was it discarded? ” (par. 7). Here I see his intelligence quite vast as he is able to make up three tentative rules on Dumpster diving from personal experience. Later on we see him discuss how to tell if canned food was good to eat. Most people assume that if it is still in a can it is good to eat, but this is not the case.

We writes that canned foods should have some sort of a vacuum and that they should not be bulging, punctured, dented or rusty (par. 10). This display of knowledge and intelligence is unrivaled and further proves his expertise. Later on he continues to talk about food safety in which he says that dried food is usually the safest, if there is no visible contamination on it (par. 12). His intelligence is once again shown when in the next paragraph he discusses what can be pared away in a vegetable and at what point it becomes too rotten to eat. He articulates that leafy vegetables are usually contaminated by liquids and hard to wash.

In these sentences about food safety we are shown a clear and well-articulated rudimentary “textbook” on how to evaluate foods that may be available to eat and whether or not it is safe to eat. But Lars Eighner does not stop here. After moving on from food safety we see his expertise in his cunning ability to locate good and credible dumpsters, such as one behind a pizza parlor. We then read into why so many pizzas go to waste and are given enough factual evidence that we nearly forget we are reading this essay from someone who hasn’t even worked in the particular restaurant, yet knew very much about it (par. 18).

In the next paragraph I read something that would not register to the average reader, or one who might have not studied the text. He said that he had never placed a bogus order to the pizza parlor to receive a free pizza (par. 13). After reading over this a couple of times it leaned me two different thoughts, one was that he was an honest person and the other that he trusted in his expertise and intelligence so much that he did not have to do something like that to get his next meal.

This put a lot of confidence in me that if I was thrown out on the streets with only this piece of writing I would be able to make him like Mr. Eighner. This essay or homemade textbook did not stop at food safety though. We are then informed about the different times of the year when people are more wasteful and likely to throw perfectly good food out. Lars Eighner shares that right after college breaks students are more likely to just throw everything out of the fridge in an attempt to become more clean and organized, which lends him some very good resources. (par. 20)

He continues on saying that when the parents or dads come to visit their kids they tend to throw everything out, including spirits, porn and drugs. Students are many times more likely to be wasteful as they have a parent or adult pays for nearly every expense, so why would they care? With every paragraph in this essay we are further convinced of Mr. Eighners intellectual superiority when it comes to eating out of a dumpster. He knows where to find the best dumpsters, what times are most successful to scavenge and finally what safety precautions should be taken before eating.