Urban Foraging

A lot of people, when they hear or read the term "urban foraging," think of gathering wild plants from the urban environment. An example is this article from The Telegraph on "Urban foraging: what foods can you find growing in cities?" The author describes walking about with a foraging expert, writing:

Over the next two hours, just in the city centre, we find over 25 edible plants including bay leaves (“Just pick a branch and hang it in the kitchen and let it dry”), rowan and hawthorn berries, crab apples, beech nuts and wormwood – the fragrant plant that is used to flavour absinthe.

Other resources for this type of foraging are:

• The Institute for Culture and Ecology, which has articles on foraging in and around Seattle, Washington. 
• Falling Fruit, which has interactive maps of locations for foraging around the world. 
• First Ways, a blog on urban foraging.
• Urban Edibles, which is a database of forageables in the Portland, Oregon area.

(But I would also mention this article, which I've cited before, on how harmful foraging can be to the wild plants).

"Urban foraging" also includes scavenging food or other items from dumpsters or, as Freegan.info describes it: "Alternatively known as trash picking, gleaning, dumpster diving, scavenging, salvaging, or curb crawling, urban foraging is the act of recovering useable goods discarded by retailers, schools, homes, businesses, construction sites – really anywhere anyone is throwing away goods that shouldn’t end up in a landfill. Frequently recovered items include clothing, food, furniture, computers, appliances, books, videos, DVDs, office supplies, lumber, tools, toys, umbrellas – just about anything you can buy in a store." The latter site has tutorials and informative articles on how to safely and legally forage in the urban environment.