Gleaning the Cube

This idea is the putting into words of a thing I like and you already know I like. That is to say, the using of other people's trash as treasure. Totally a big thing these days, I know, but let's talk a little more about it.

What got me started thinking about this again we watching the Colbert Report talking about "Freegans." Now I'm not sure who named those eco-hippy folks who are dumpster diving for people's still-potentially-useful detritus, but I guess they didn't bother to Google the activity in the first place...cause it already has a name...it's called gleaning. Gleaners do it for food usually, which is necessarily grosser and probably why these folks have picked another name.

Maybe you've heard of Urban Ore...they are like the walmart (or the anti-walmart?) of gleaned goods. They make it super easy and less in need of literally sifting through garbage. Not that I'm against you doing this yourself, but the store means that more people will take advantage of this, which means more recycling and less waste.

So the ideas here are one) try it yourself. If you live a big city you can probably find all sort of valuable waste on the streets totally not in trash cans and ripe for the taking. Take it. Art it up. Yay. And two) I would love to see the development of the Urban Ore theme extending to other places. For one, it might be neat to have it as an extension of stores that sell the stuff that turns into waste in the first place. Like Borders having a used books section. Or a furniture store having a furniture rubbage pile. And I would love to see Ikea do this so as to prove how they totally couldn't do this, cause they sell worthless crap that stops being useful the moment the jolly yellow&blue giant sucks up your cash.

Also how about an extension of the eco-park theme of Urban Ore too, like it could be like a land-fill theme park, like you would walk around piles of trash and could buy anything you wanted, but they would have only included non-gross things. So you wouldn't chance running into a rat or anything. And the dude who sold you the stuff could live in a little shack with a rusted tin roof with old wood slat walls and he could be playing an old steel-string when you walked up to buy things and he would haggle kindly with your over prices. Maybe we should have called this one good fantasy land a day.