The Buddhist dumpster divers hold up one of their finds. (Photo by Geoff Kroepel)
Every fall, a group of Buddhists go dumpster diving. They’re looking for things to sell at
their benefit yard sale. But sifting through the trash is also a way for these Buddhists to
practice their spiritual beliefs. Kyle Norris recently accompanied several Buddhists on a
dumpster diving excursion:
Transcript
Every fall, a group of Buddhists go dumpster diving. They’re looking for things to sell at
their benefit yard sale. But sifting through the trash is also a way for these Buddhists to
practice their spiritual beliefs. Kyle Norris recently accompanied several Buddhists on a
dumpster diving excursion:
Geoff Kroepel is standing inside a dark-green industrial dumpster. On top of a mound of
trash. He pulls out a Bible. And a set of matching placemats. And a tablecloth:
“…It’s a desk lamp…here are some ping-pong balls, ping pong anyone?”
Kroepel hands these things to Christian Hameman. Hameman showed up at the
temple today to volunteer a few hours of his time. He thought he’d be pulling weeds in
the garden. Instead the guy found himself inside a dumpster:
“Stuff I have at home isn’t as good as some of these things people are throwing in the
trash.”
You could hear the glass crunch when Geoff Kroepel jumped down from the dumpster.
The dumpster is located in a University of Michigan student neighborhood. The basic
drill is that the Buddhists take things from the trash. And then they clean and fix the
things for their annual yard sale. The stuff they find is really nice. We’re talking North
Face jackets and brand new coffee makers.
Before he leaves, Kroepel pulls out a stick of incense from a tiny container in his shirt.
And he lights it. Then he softly recites a few lines of dedication, makes a bow, and tucks
the incense into the corner of the dumpster, to give thanks:
“It’s kind of strange how there’s so much waste and even within the waste we get plenty,
we get all that we need and it’s good. So burning the incense is an offering to reminding
you that even in the waste, even in the trash there’s good stuff.”
Kroepel is a member of the Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple. Haju Sunim is the temple’s
priest. She says dumpster diving is actually a modern day version of a Buddhist tradition.
In the time of the Buddha, monks and nuns would make their clothes from the scraps they
found on corpses, or from what they salvaged from garbage piles. Even today, some
modern-day Buddhists make and wear their own patched robes:
“In the whole tradition of the patched robe monk there is this whole thing about making
things last a long time-patching them, patching them, patching them. And taking care
with soap to make it last as long as can. Actually just taking care of a set of clothing to
make it last for long time has whole kind of spiritual aspect to it, if you do it!”
If you take care of your things instead of just throwing them out when they’re still usable.
Lenny Bass has organized the sale for the past twelve years. He’s memorized all the
major dumpster locations within several miles of campus. And he knows the best stuff
comes from the dumpsters surrounding the fraternities and sororities.
Bass says when he stands inside a dumpster overflowing with perfectly usable things, he
really understands what people mean when they talk about a consumer, throw-away
society.
Right now Bass is popping his head inside different dumpsters. To figure out if they’re
worth going through. He loves dumpster diving. But says it’s also challenging:
“I think when I was growing up I had this idea that people who jumped into garbage cans
and dumpsters had to be really in dire straits, really messed up people. Not much in that
one. That perception that I used to have flies against what I’m doing now. I have to
combat that perception of myself and know that other people have that perception of me
as well.”
Not everyone loves the dumpster divers. Sometimes people yell at them to get out of their
trash. Or they threaten to call the cops. But looking through the trash in this town is
perfectly legal.
Bass says when he was in college he was one of those kids who would chuck all of his
things in the trash at the end of the year. But he’s changed. He now thinks dumpster
diving actually has its own spiritual qualities:
“I don’t come home from dumpster diving feeling like oh my god, I’ve become
enlightened. I come home and I’m filthy, and it’s disgusting. And yet there’s some part of
it, that deeper part that has undergone just slightly more of a transformation about how I
see the world. And I think the more experiences you can have putting your self out there
in these situations the more you grow into a real person. Whether you want to call that
godly or whatever.”
About half of the things the temple sold this year came from private donations. The other
half, straight from the trash. They were things people thought had no value. The temple
raised 12,000 dollars this year from their sale.
For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.