i didn't even know this! :



i'll take all the stendhal i can get. i have an acute case of stendhal syndrome anyway.

wink wink, love the argentos.

why don't you come over?

I think there may be another reason why more dumpsters are locked these days...

When I was 11, I used to DD all the time, mostly because I was nosy, but I found a few treasures. Once I got trapped inside a dumpster. Fortunately, I had told my mum the general area I was gonna be in that evening and she found me a couple of hours later. The stores in the strip were all closed for the day before I even got into the container, so I could have been stuck there for much longer.



And not too long ago, there was a couple of problems with bodies in dumpsters here. One was an old homeless guy who got in to sleep and just died, the other was a guy who was murdered and dumped in the container. Due to the type of dumpsters and the loading systems of the trucks, the bodies were damaged before they were discovered.



Hope I didn't just gross y'all out.

I've never dumpster dived, but have gotten quite a lot of good furniture from off the streets. It seems that people throw out things that could be used for other purposes.

I'm slightly hesitant to look for food in the garbage - there would be so much bacteria in there and I could get sick.

I dumpster dive for food. You're OK to do it in the UK. The only way you can get prosecuted is if you're charged for "active trespass" -- e.g. if you're hopping fences.



I take the risk with going over gates, because there's so much good junk to be found! Honestly... Food's all packaged, and if it's not (e.g. bakery bread) it's usually thrown in bags before going in the bin.







The vegan part of one haul -- the sack was full of potatoes, the green bags bananas...



I'd totally recommend diving. My family only shops for odd things like flour nowadays, and diving lets me feed my cats meat without purchasing it.

That's a nice haul, IntheFlesh. While I would love to find some goodies at the nearby grocery stores (damn security cameras and compactors), I would be too squeamish to eat any baked goods or anything that I couldn't wash or cook in high temperature. Too much risk for contamination.








Picking up discarded furniture off the streets is a good way to infest your home with bed bugs. I would spray the hell out of it with insecticide and leave it out for a while before I drag it in.

A couple of other reasons why they might be locked..



People get into the dumpsters and make a huge mess around them.



Identity theft. Some people pretend to look for stuff when they're really looking for paperwork that might not have made it through the shredder.

I've gone diving with a couple of friends may be once or twice but I've only really done it by my self for the most part. I live in a suburb almost, rural suburb of Fort Worth Texas, where not much business is done down here except housing and cafe's, and I only ride a bike so getting around to doing it is tough, but the few times I've DD'ed I literally stuff my sack full of every thing from cashews to Vegetable oil.



When I get my own place I'm going to try depending on solely "freeganism" for my food.

how do you think i get around?



i sure as **** don't drive. although, today it's the skateboard cuz the demon bike has two flats.

Well that's no sweat if you live in an urban area, but if you live among cow farms and wheat fields its not the most ideal way to get around.

a friend and i went dumpster diving once, this bakery downtown is real nice and puts all their day-old goodies in a seperate bag before tossing ;]

we had soooo many bagels >_< ugh

I just started dumpster diving this morning. I've trash-picked on and off my entire life, but this morning was the first time I ever checked inside dumpsters. I walked to the business area of my small town, checked in seven dumpsters, and got three useful items. Behind the bank I scored a Crayon plastic thing that may turn out to be useful. If not, it'll just go in my trash. Behind the overpriced, small-selection market I scored a bag of Valencia oranges (two were moldy, I washed the rest and stuck them in the freezer since they were getting soft and I like them frozen), and a bag of old-looking Russet potatoes. I threw out the bad potatoes, scrubbed up the rest, and plan to use them in mashed potatoes this evening.



This couldn't have come at a better time for me. I need to make it another 40-odd days before I get a paycheck, so this should really help. I also love the idea of using stuff other people threw out, saving items from going to a landfill, and saving the merchants money because they now have fewer items they have to pay to dispose of.



There was one locked dumpster. I took a quick peek at it and surmised it was likely full of boxes. I don't need more boxes right now, and I have limited storage space.



Question for other divers: Do you open/cut open trash bags to look through them? I didn't because I presumed it would be hard to collect all the trash again and put it back in the bag afterwards especially if if I cut a bag. I don't want to leave a site messier than I found it--bad diving manners. I also guessed that these trash bags would probably yield fewer useful items since it looked like a lot of paper in most bags.

I'm guessing most people haven't seen this thread since I bumped it.



To repeat my question:

Question for other divers: Do you open/cut open trash bags to look through them? I didn't because I presumed it would be hard to collect all the trash again and put it back in the bag afterwards especially if if I cut a bag. I don't want to leave a site messier than I found it--bad diving manners. I also guessed that these trash bags would probably yield fewer useful items since it looked like a lot of paper in most bags.

We'd occasionally open knotted-up bags, but never cut them open: I agree that its bad manners to leave the site messier than you found it, and it gives dumpster divers a bad name. My dumpster diving has only been in NYC, outside places like supermarkets, and trash bags often did yield perfectly useful food (so they didn't just have paper). After taking what we wanted, we'd knot up the bags again.

Wow, that's an awesome haul!

I want to dumpster dive so bad, I just don't know where to start.

I poked around some dumpsters behind a QFC in my neighborhood the other day, but found nothing beside cardboard boxes. The other dumpsters were locked.

Are there certain stores that are better for diving than others? Or is it mostly trying your luck?

The grocery stores around here, the big ones anyway, tend to have those huge tractor-trailer size dumpsters, that require special keys to get inside. Or, the dumpsters are all behind high fences. I'd only even think about climbing a fence well after the store had closed. If caught, the usual reason "I'm looking for boxes" doesn't go over real big.






From what I've heard, you just have to keep looking in different dumpsters at different times of the day and days of the week. You'll figure out which dumpsters are the best, and when to hit them. None of us probably live in your area, so like anything else, you'll have to figure out what works for you.

I had dumpstered bread for the first time the other day. Checking out bakeries are a good idea, especialy if you are already familier with there bread. You do normaly have to open bags for this, since they normaly throw the bread in trash bags and then in the dumpster. They trash the fresh bread at the end of every day, so the bread isn't old or moldy, and is normaly soft. It's a good hit, since, where I live, cheap white bread from the grocery store tends to be $4 per bag, which is crazy.

Where I live dumpsters are all locked away and it's illegal, sadly.

Thanks. =]

MA state law, or Worcestershire city law?



I consider snipping locks to be destruction of property, so I would never do that. But I don't have any qualms about opening an unlocked dumpster with the lock sitting right there.



Have any of you regular dumpster-divers been approached while diving? What have people said to you or asked you? What were your responses?

Regarding food found in dumpsters...



Part of me says, "I've worked in food service and grocery stores, and I've seen firsthand the gross stuff that happens on a regular basis, so maybe a dumpster is the least of my worries."



The other part of me says "But do I really want to add the unknown hazards of a dumpster to the hazards I already know exist in food obtained from others?"



Thoughts?

I wish I could've dumpster dived at my old retail job. The amount of good stuff we threw away on a daily basis was totally ridiculous. Everything from clothes that were perfectly fine, to books, furniture, electronics, and packaged food that had damaged boxes. They hardly ever donated usable items and never discontinued food and instead threw everything away. It was such a waste.

Did they have a lock on the dumpster, or did you not make a habit of dumpster diving then?

The dumpster was on private property and they constantly called the police whenever there were people around it. We were also instructed at times to do even more damage to things that were being thrown away so people wouldn't be tempted to dumpster dive. It sucked because tons of dented canned food was just trashed, basically anything that wouldn't look pretty on the shelves and had minor cosmetic flaws were tossed.

That's sad, fadeaway.



I had another thought about why some dumpsters may be locked--the companies don't want random people throwing their trash in there. If enough trash that isn't theirs gets dumped, then it costs them money because they can't fit all their trash in their dumpster that they pay for.



How do you other dumpster divers respond to the idea that only people who can't afford to buy things pull things out of dumpsters, or that dumpster diving makes people look needy and desperate?

*bump* Questions, questions...

I can barely afford to shop, which is why I have started diving. I don't give a poop if it makes me look 'desperate', and any diver who does, in my opinion, is a snob who is probably diving for the wrong reasons. I wouldn't imagine that someone who is okay with sifting through trash cares about what other people think of them, you know?

(Italics mine)



I know, I know... It's just that I'm trying to encourage my fiance to come with me when Dumpster diving, and he has all these reasons not to. Funny thing is, he admits to having sorted through other people's trash when he lived in Guatemala, but he has some issue with doing it here. Geeze, doing it here is so much more rewarding because poor Guatemalans tend not to throw out a lot of useful stuff because they use it to death themselves.



Prime trash-picking night in my town will not be ours to have for the next while because that's the only night our pre-marital counselors can meet with us, and we're meeting with them every week. Oh well, come January I can take long walks that double as trash-picking excursions again. That's when people will be getting rid of their perfectly-good Christmas gifts, too.

Travels With Lizbeth offers some good tips on dumpster diving among other things. It's a good read.