Man: First, the heart of freeganism is a commitment to using fewer resources, and one way to do that is to throw away less trash. As reported in a 2007 article in the New York Times, the Environmental Protection Agency found that we throw away nearly 250 million tons of trash every year, which translates to four pounds on average per person every single day. Two freegan practices, waste minimization, and waste reclamation, specifically deal with trash and seek to reduce the amount of garbage that Americans produce every year.