Dumpster Diving.

Dumpster Diving is great. I don't know how many of you live near food co-ops, but at the one I work at, if the employees dont' take the "spoiled" food home, we throw it out...and when I say spoiled, it may just be bruised produce, or a dented can, or something that someone opened and didn't like.

 

i love living in college towns, especially in the spring and fall, because students always throw away such wonderful things.

 

Yup that's practically a holiday for some of the people around here who are committed to dumpster diving...all ages, too!

 

We have a pretty big University here plus a fair sized college, and around this time of year, it's awesome the things they dump! You could easily furnish a house :drool:

 

man i hope i can find somebody else who dumped some wooden stands, because my inventory's going to take over a second table soon! maybe i can find some racks i can lash to the posts of my pop-up or a shower curtain rod i can hang shit from or something.

jeez i'm so far behind i'm going to miss all the good festivals this year. might as well make up for lost time by expanding my set-up for free!

 

Almost all of the furniture in my old house was from dumpsters.

We once even found a leather couch by a dumpster....

Insane.

 

Kitty fabulous: I work at marshall's, and one thing I learned is: you know those little metal stands people use to hold toilet paper? People also use them to showcase jewelry! they work well.

Just a question, when you go dumpster diving, is it like, in broad daylight? wouldn't you be afraid of getting caught? I dunno what the laws in my city are, but I'd be mortified if I got caught by the police.

I just wish I had a big car, because one time i found this huge wooden round table on the curb for pickup. I nearly asked my neighbor to borrow her pickup truck to go get it, but it was the middle of winter and the table was covered in snow, my boyfriend said it would warp.

 

The stuff we throw away on this planet,
and especially in this country,
is bizzar beyond my ability to describe.

 

Went dumpster diving behind a really cool music/bookstore that was closing in our ultra conservative town and found a blacklight, a guitar stand -both still in the box, racks that hold cd's and several cd's

 

I thought Apr-May was the dumpster diving season in college towns.
Then I move to the big city and OMG the things they throw out here.

If dumpster diving is illegal here they don't enforce it cos they're more focused on the ILLEGAL dumping haha.
I built my current PC with everything but a couple of cards and HDD by dumpster diving. Tested the PSU with my trusty old multimeter and all's good . The world needs its eScavengers.

 

Paris-based film-maker Agnes Varda made a great documentary all about dumpster diving and the whole idea behind wastefulness and how much unnecessary garbage the Western world creates. It's called "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse." You may be able to find it online... dumpster diving is a GREAT way of finding perfectly good food (even bread that's just day-old! ...it's a way of life for many people, not just those that cannot "afford" food from the store.

Peace energy.

 

"hippy dumpster man if you fart nobody can smell it
they think its more beautifull scent
than what you normally get standin near u"

sounds more like an apt metaphor for the people who throw the shit out

 

Up here we have a few things easier than dumpster-diving. When someone doesn't want something anymore, they set it on their front lawn a few days before trash day with a simple "FREE" sign on it. I've "found" a kids' sandbox & picnic table, several types of small tables, my son's dresser... gosh, I don't even know what all I've found now! And we can get rid of things the same way. Recently we went through our children's videocassettes & weeded down to just the few we absolutely couldn't live without. I put the rest of them in a brown paper bag & labelled it "Free Movies - Please give me a new home!" And within the hour I saw a mom with a wagon-full of young kiddies going up the road with them Made my day to see that someone else would be getting some use out of what we no longer need!

The other goodies are freecycle & craigslist. (they've got a free section too) I've gotten a table & 4 chairs for $25, my mom has edged ALL of her gardens (she has a 1-acre lot) with free bricks, and we've gotten a side-table, my daughters' blanket chest & the cutest little footstool all for the cost of the gas to go pick it up.

I'm a little leery of dumpster diving here - several of the ones I've seen lately all have stickers on them saying that it's illegal. Dunno why & from what I'm hearing it sounds like this might be a local "thing," but I'd hate to be caught breaking the law.
love,
mom