Could you survive for three weeks in a dump, living off of what others had discarded?

Eleven people did just that in a new British reality show, Dumped, that premiered last Sunday on BBC America (the show is made up of four episodes total, and runs on Sundays through March 31). Makers of the show are hoping that they can drum up awareness about wastefulness (and a desperate need for reuse and recycling) by revealing the ugly, smelly side of the stuff we throw away.

Contestants - who include Selena, a 37-year old personal trainer, and Ian, a 23-year old marine engineer - are periodically challenged to build things out of the trash, such as a decent shelter out of metal poles and an old tarp.

Salon.com featured a review of the series, which revealed that the contestants aren't exactly eating the scraps off the ground - the show provides them with fresh food, water, and clean toilet paper, and other things you can't really find at a dump (though I'd bet many freegans would beg to differ - and in fact, would laugh at the show's entire premise, given that a freegan lifestyle is exactly this: searching for perfectly good scraps that others deemed unworthy and tossed away).

The show sounds like it's trying to take typical reality fodder - putting pretty, whiny people in uncomfortable situations with the end goal of trying to win money - and attach a message onto it: in this case, "stop wasting so much junk." Even if the show doesn't affect the contestants, perhaps it'll catch the eye of a viewer who will be newly inspired to mend their wasteful ways.