Dumpster diving

G

greenfreak

New Member
Are you a "garbage picker"?

In my area, you have to call for "special pickup" if you have stuff that won't fit in a garbage truck; furniture, wood, stuff like that. My Dad used to find out when special pickup day was and drive the neighborhood with his pickup truck, picking up stuff as he went along. As he always says, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

I've never done it myself but have had quite a few things that I've left on the curb with the intention of calling special pickup which dissapeared within an hour.

Last night I came home from work and there was a ton of boxes and old wicker furniture in front of my next door neighbor's house. I never met her but she was an older woman with Parkinson's and hardly ever left the house. While I parked my car, I watched a woman pull over to the side of the road and load up a wicker chair and foot rest into her car.

I think she must have died or something because the lights haven't been on in the house for over a month and there's a big dumpster in her driveway where her car used to be. I don't want anything on the curb but she's always had a bunch of nice houseplants on her windowsills.

I could never ask the people who show up at the house (maybe her kids) if I could have them. I'd be too embarrassed. Have you ever done that? Gone "dumpster diving"? Picked up garbage from the curb?
 
i am shameless this way. i accept everything. if i can't fix it up, strip it for parts, or find a home for it....then it can officially be called trash! i haven't purchased a new piece of furniture in 5 years. but i've bought plenty of stain, paint, stencils, sandpaper etc....
 
A few months back I went out with the other boys in the band to the city of Dalton, which is supposedly the largest carpet manufacturing center in the world, to dumpster dive for old/discarded new carpeting and underpadding to use as wall sound dampening materials within the band practice space. We got well more than we could ever hope to use on the very first run.
 
my landlord has a debris clearing business and one day they had this sugar truck wreck on the highway. he hauled about a ton of sugar to his empty lot. it was still in the bags, 50 lb bags. some were gross with road gunk on them, but some were cool. won't be running out of sugar for a long time......hoping for a rice truck wreck next...
 
anyone remember that VW commercial with the two guys and the stinky chair? with the DADADA song? that's me.
 
In my house I have 3 couches and 2 coffee tables which were found on the road. What else, an artist table I used as a computer desk for 2 years, a really nice dresser (it just needed new knobs, about $2.00 at a hardware store), 15" computer monitor, an iron, desk lamp, bookshelf stereo system (no speakers), and other things I'm sure I'm leaving out. Mattresses are off limits. *piss*

College towns are the best for this in both May and August.

rrfield
 
This is a big thing in Germany. There is a certain time of year where people just load up the curbs with their old furniture. I got a great pine shrunk/entertainment center this way! :clap:
 
dumpster diving is a great way to find computer stuff, i recently picked up a laser printer that worked fine after i opened it up and popped the power button back into place. it's amazing what companies through away that could come back to bite them in the ass, they're lucky i'm pretty benevolent.
 
[Foxworthy]Hey... if that couch is still there after dark... it be in my living room![/Foxworthy]
 
no. and reading the title i thought this was a reference to a weird assed card game my friends and i used to play
 
Nope, never have done the dumpster dive. I'm more the type to chuck things out if it even looks like it wants to start falling apart.

I'm not the packrat type, so once something has served its purpose it's time to throw it away. I wouldn't want to clutter up my surroundings with other people's garbage too.
 
I'm not a professional at it (I want to go for the Olympics), but I'm pretty damn good at it. Once per week, a buddy of mine and I go for out 'walk'. We go by Golden-garbage road...a place where rich people live and toss out the best stuff :)...then swing by a few row-houses (Where you'd figure they wouldn't have the cash to toss stuff out, but they do).

I occasionally go behind some of the larger palces like Home-Depot...looking for semi-dead plants that I can Bonsai or try and bring back to life.

I used to carry a screwdriver when I worked overnight downtown. Companies toss out computer bits all the damn time, so my battery, RAM, hard-drives etc...all are 're-appropriated' goods.

My walk-buddy goes for bikes and bike-bits. He's got 5 full bikes and enough bits to make about others in his shed. Sells them to upgrade his bike.

Kids toys!!! Lots of them! A little bit of paint and they're brand new. I have a kid-sled downstairs that I'm going to be using all winter :) Cost-$zero....even the paint was free :)

I'm saving up for some garage-overalls for the really specialized dumpster diving :)
 
My friend was arrested for dumpster diving. :rofl:

I've seen a few grids, towers, and dishes/receivers around some radio shops here which I've come back to get and they were gone. I could use one too....dishes are hard to find these days.
 
I hear that from people on my gardening message board a lot; finding out what days they go through their stock and making a visit after hours. Especially Home Depot because not only do they treat their gardening section the worst out of any other store, they don't discount damaged plants. They just chuck them out.

The CVS in my town has these hard plastic bins that they get all their stock in on inventory day. They're really strong and I used to have some that I bought for storage of clothes out of season. At least twice I've been there on the right day and there were at least 40 of them stacked out back. I could have easily walked off with a bunch of them. But I didn't. :shrug:
 
Nope, never had much oportunity here (UK government is hoping for 98% recycling of trash by 2007.......so the trashman shifts the stuff sharpish from the roadside) :(

I do spend a lot of time rakeing around the local scrapyard....mostly for engine parts but I also buy a lot of weightlifting gear there (150kg of iron plates.....two benches ....... a squat rack and 6 different barbell&dumbell bars have cost me mebbe £50 over the last coupla years, a quick lick of rustproof paint and they look good as new).......also a big fan of carboot sales (fleamarkets on foriegn shores?) tis amazing to see the weird stuff folks are sellling, I usually end up buying a lot of it :evilcool:

But I do think the idea of being able to pick up stuff for free to be very cool :)
 
re : dumpster diving

i love the people who do it cause it sure as hell saves me a trip to the tip
thank f**k for all the dumpster divers in the world, i love you:winkkiss:
 
Got myself a Sega two nights ago. Didn't have any of the joysticks or games, but it did have the power cords and TV hookup wires :)

Hmmm...wonder if it works :)
 
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