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This article was submitted by Keilin Huang, the 2023 Ron Chin Memorial Scholarship presented to a top graduate student.

I have a confession to make: I love free stuff. Give me a conference, a Costco, heck, even a dentist’s office; I am happy to take their free pens, highlighters, food samples, and toothbrushes. I believe that I get my thriftiness from my family: my dad would regularly drive up and down the streets of our neighborhood looking for discarded kitchen appliances. Meanwhile my mom loved thrift stores; although my mom told me that her mother, my Po Po, was our family’s champion dumpster diver. Little did I know that I would eventually follow in their footsteps.

Moving to New York City to attend a publishing program at New York University was my Sex and the City dream come true, except that I soon realized it requires a certain amount of frugality and budgeting. Everyone tells you how expensive it is to live in New York, and I’m here to tell you…it’s true. I would go to the drug store, only to realize that I had bought almost $50 worth of who-knows-what. Eating out in the city, while delicious, was also pricey.

I vowed to cook meals in my apartment more, take advantage of the manager’s specials at grocery stores, and opt to go to cheaper shops, but even that beacon of affordability called Trader Joe’s was getting expensive. Taking items (mainly furniture) off the street was helpful, but it was hard for a number of reasons: I didn’t have a car. I would have to lug items around on the subway. And frankly, I felt ashamed to be seen taking “trash.” Anyway, groceries were starting to be my biggest expense (besides rent and utilities) and I had no idea how to make them cost less. It was during this time in my life that I found myself furiously googling things like “free food in NYC” and “how to live cheaply.” After about half an hour studying a list of food pantries and one-time deals on meals for downloading a restaurant’s app, I came across a group called NYC Freegan Meetup. A dumpster diving group. I hope it would have made my Po Po proud of me.

My Junk-loving Grandma

My Po Po, Fay Hing Lee, was born September 5, 1917, in the Lee village of Wan Hong, Qau Hung Li, Toisan, Guangdong in China. She married a man from the nearby village of Gom Benn, Voy Wong, my grandpa, in 1934. Not long afterward, she was left to her own devices when he immigrated to the United States to make a living. It would be more than a decade before she was reunited with him again in America due to the Japanese invasion of China and World War II. 

Fay was a mother, immigrant and restaurateur, but to me, she was Po Po, my grandma. When my brother and I were young, we would make trips down to Riverside, California, with my mom (Fay’s daughter, Linda) to visit. We didn’t see Po Po that often because we lived in San Francisco and the trip would require planning and free time. Because of this, Po Po often felt like a stranger.

Neither my brother, Mark, nor I could speak Toisan (save for a nursery rhyme that my mom recited when we were toddlers) and her house was packed full of stuff she found off the streets that she tried to gift to us. Her garden felt tropical and was always lush thanks to her green thumb. Her laundry hung outside to dry because she didn’t use her clothes dryer. Why did she take “junk” from the streets? Why couldn’t she have a “normal” house where she used her modern appliances? It felt surreal to be at Po Po’s house and I always found her to be quirky, a little too unfamiliar for my Chinese-American ways. 

Avoid Buying Anything

I regularly started dumpster diving with the Freegan group after attending several events with them one New York summer. (Note: While vegans avoid buying animal products, Freegans avoid buying anything.) Before my first Freegan meeting, I figured we’d go through some trash bins and I’d go back home, my reusable bag filled with some hummus packets and a couple of apples. Instead, I ended up having to borrow three additional giant tote bags for all the items I found, which included two rotisserie chickens, several pears and oranges, a bunch of bananas, a carton of Greek yogurt, locally sourced chocolate bars, a couple of vegan breakfast burritos, freshly baked sourdough bread rolls, and many cartons of pre-washed organic greens. Initially, the embarrassment of digging through trash made me self-conscious, but soon I realized that nobody else cared. 

I knew that society needed to do better at reducing the trash it generated, but I had no idea just how much was being thrown away. Through the Freegans I learned about how you could live a more sustainable life, not only by digging through the trash but also through little changes to everyday life, such as mending things instead of throwing them away or air drying to save on energy. When I first told my parents about dumpster diving, they were uncomfortable with the idea. Despite their own adventures with discarded items, food seemed to be a whole other ballgame. Eventually though, my mom told me that I was taking after Po Po. “She used to take things from the dumpster you know,” she said. 

Appalling Waste

My Po Po passed away September 23, 2000, when I was 12-years-old. I wish that I had gotten to know her better, curious how she would’ve reacted to me dumpster diving. To many immigrants, America is a land of opportunity, which it was to Fay and Voy, but it was also full of hardships and obstacles. When Fay became a widow at the age of 58, in 1964, she had to learn how to survive on her own. She barely spoke English so I imagine she had to rely on skills that she already had. She had lived in poverty for the first 30 years of her life and I imagine that World War II made it hard for my grandpa to send money back to her. When she came to the United States, I imagine that seeing so much being wasted was appalling. While she was unknowingly living a green lifestyle, I believe that she had an understanding that waste would not be sustainable for her or her children. I saw many of her same traits in the people that I dumpster dove with: resilience and a need to utilize what is already there; an understanding of overconsumption; and a desire to share her experiences with others. 

I’m currently in grad school for Environmental Studies with a focus on Zero Waste Initiatives and Sustainability. I have chosen this path for myself because I’m seeing firsthand the repercussions of the excesses of a wasteful society, and I would like to find solutions so future generations can continue to thrive. While my Po Po may not have wanted to call herself an environmentalist, I do believe that we both share a goal of creating a better environment for all to live and grow up in. I hope my studies will help me fulfill my own goals of fighting for a healthier planet, not only for myself but for generations to come. I like to think my Po Po would be proud of that.

Keilin Huang is graduate student at the University of Montana preparing for a career in zero waste and sustainability management. She is daughter of Linda Huang, and the granddaughter of Fay Hing Lee. Her interests include travel, anime, the outdoors, and reading.