Gleaning

 

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legally enforced entitlement of the poor in a number of Christian kingdoms.

 

Tzedakah is a Hebrew word meaning “righteousness”, but commonly used to signify charity. This concept of “charity” differs from the modern Western understanding of “charity.” The latter is typically understood as a spontaneous act of goodwill and a marker of generosity; tzedakah is an ethical obligation.

Tzedakah refers to the religious obligation to do what is right and just, which Judaism emphasizes as an important part of living a spiritual life. Unlike voluntary philanthropy, tzedakah is seen as a religious obligation that must be performed regardless of one’s financial standing, and so is mandatory even for those of limited financial means. Tzedakah is considered to be one of the three main acts that can positively influence an unfavorable heavenly decree.

The word tzedakah is related to the Hebrew word Tzadik, meaning righteous as an adjective (or righteous individual as a noun in the form of a substantive). Although the word appears 157 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, typically in relation to “righteousness” per se, its use as a term for “charity” in the above sense is an adaptation of Rabbinic Judaism in Talmudic times.

In the Middle Ages, Maimonides conceived of an eight-level hierarchy of tzedakah, where the highest form is to give a gift, loan, or partnership that will result in the recipient becoming self-sufficient instead of living upon others. In his view, the second highest form of tzedakah is to give donations anonymously to unknown recipients.

 

 

Dumpster diving (also totting, skipping, skip diving or skip salvage,) is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners, but deemed useful to the picker. It is not confined to dumpsters and skips specifically, and may cover standard household waste containers, curbsides, landfills or small dumps.

Different terms are used to refer to different forms of this activity. For picking materials from the curbside trash collection, expressions such as curb shopping, trash picking or street scavenging are sometimes used. When seeking primarily metal to be recycled, one is scrapping. When picking the leftover food from farming left in the fields one is gleaning.

People dumpster dive for items such as clothing, furniture, food, and similar items in good working condition. Some people do this out of necessity due to poverty, while others do so professionally and systematically for profit.

 

 

Food rescue, also called food recovery or food salvage, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as restaurants, grocery stores, produce markets, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.

The recovered food is edible, but often not sellable. Products that are at or past their “sell by” dates or are imperfect in any way such as a bruised apple or day-old bread can be donated by grocery stores, food vendors, restaurants, and farmers markets. Other times, the food is unblemished, but restaurants may have made or ordered too much or may have good pieces of food (such as scraps of fish or meat) that are byproducts of the process of preparing foods to cook and serve. Also, food manufacturers may donate products that marginally fail quality control, or that have become short-dated.

Organizations that encourage food recovery, food rescue, sharing, gleaning and similar waste-avoidance schemes come under the umbrella of food banks, food pantries or soup kitchens.

 

 

Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word “freegan” is a portmanteau of “free” and “vegan”. While vegans avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.

Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with “dumpster diving” for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting in abandoned buildings, and “guerrilla gardening” in unoccupied city parks.

 

 

Usufruct is a limited real right (or in rem right) found in civil law and mixed jurisdictions that unites the two property interests of usus and fructus:

* Usus (use) is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering it.

* Fructus (fruit, in a figurative sense) is the right to derive profit from a thing possessed: for instance, by selling crops, leasing immovable or annexed movables, taxing for entry, and so on.

A usufruct is either granted in severally or held in common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed. The third civilian property interest is abusus (literally abuse), the right to alienate the thing possessed, either by consuming or destroying it (e.g., for profit), or by transferring it to someone else (e.g., sale, exchange, gift). Someone enjoying all three rights has full ownership.

Generally, a usufruct is a system in which a person or group of persons uses the real property (often land) of another. The “usufructuary” does not own the property, but does have an interest in it, which is sanctioned or contractually allowed by the owner. Two different systems of usufruct exist: perfect and imperfect.

In a perfect usufruct, the usufructuary is entitled the use of the property but cannot substantially change it. For example, an owner of a small business may become ill and grant the right of usufruct to an individual to run their business. The usufructuary thus has the right to operate the business and gain income from it, but does not have the right to, for example, tear down the business and replace it, or to sell it.

The imperfect usufruct system gives the usufructuary some ability to modify the property. For example, if a land owner grants a piece of land to a usufructuary for agricultural use, the usufructuary may have the right to not only grow crops on the land but also make improvements that would help in farming, say by building a barn.

However this can be disadvantageous to the usufructuary: if a usufructuary makes material improvements - such as a building, or fixtures attached to the building, or other fixed structures - to their usufruct, they do not own the improvements, and any money spent on those improvements would belong to the original owner at the end of the usufruct.

In many usufructuary property systems, such as the traditional ejido system in Mexico, individuals or groups may only acquire the usufruct of the property, not legal ownership. A usufruct is directly equitable to a common-law life estate except that a usufruct can be granted for a term shorter than the holder’s lifetime (cestui que vie).

 

A waste picker is a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption. There are millions of waste pickers worldwide, predominantly in developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well.

Forms of waste picking have been practiced since antiquity, but modern traditions of waste picking took root during industrialization in the nineteenth century. Over the past half-century, waste picking has expanded vastly in the developing world due to urbanization, toxic colonialism and the global waste trade. Many cities only provide solid waste collection.

 

To be wealthy means that you have achieved “a great quantity of money and/or possessions.” Wealth is an end state.

Abundance, on the other hand, is an energy you step into. Webster defines abundance as “generating an ample quantity.” The key word being ample, which means generously sufficient.

 

Tis’ the season for thanksgiving and sharing and giving, but this is a different sort of year. This is the time of year where we show our best side.

Instead of the red bucket or mailing that check before you log into Amazon, take a look around. Can you still wear all those winter coats? How many sweaters do you need? If you are not hoping on a jet to the slopes, do you need those ski boots? Are your kids going to eat those yams just like they didn’t eat them last year? How many rolls of toilet paper do you need?

 

Maybe glean from your abundance to end a bad year and start the New Year off right?