[TheForge] Dumpster Diving

[Bruce Freeman]

I applaud you on your recycleing.

I've been doing this in a minimal way for many, many
years.  In my recent "spring cleaning" I finally threw
away a largely dried tube of "art foam cement" I'd
surfaced with from a dumpster dive in LA in about
1968!  There was a box of these tubes, mostly full. 
In all that time, I never had to buy Duco Cement, or
anything like that!  (Clearly, I don't use this stuff
a lot...)

One of the reasons I recently broke down and bought an
old used pickup truck was to enable me to haul away
stuff left for the trash.  I've had to pass up much
stuff I or someone I know could have put to use, just
because I couldn't haul ANYTHING with my subcompact
commuter car.  I could have cried about passing up a
good old hardwood (painted yucch!) chest of drawers
that I could have used for a tool chest - if stripping
it didn't reveal birds-eye maple or something of the
sort.

Bear in mind, however, that in a few (VERY few, I
hope) municipalities, stuff left out for trash pickup
is considered property of the municipality.  You can
always get around this by asking the permission of the
person who left it for collection.  However, in
principal you could be charged with theft for picking
up junk left by the side of the road.  

Since there's obvious a narc lurking on this forum, I
suggest that anyone wanting to brag about making a
haul from curb or dumpster, write it up using a
euphamism like, "The guy down the block gave me..."  I
especially suggest this if you can be identified  in
some important way (like, back to your employer) from
your email address, signature block, etc.

One rotten apple spoils the barrel.

Bruce
NJ
--- dann at wctatel.net wrote:

> 
> A
> I have heard that common practice in many cities is
> that unwanted items
> are placed out by the garbage cans, sometimes with a
> "Free" sign on them,
> some times without, but neighbors, or drive by
> people, can pick up the
> "junk" bicycle, the "junk" chair, etc and haul it
> off for their own use. 
> Recycling.
> 
> My local garbage man... works for a "waste systems"
> sub entity.   I had a
> big 6 yard dumptser for debris disposal and asked
> about dumping the old
> microwave, old 386 computer etc.  He said something
> like, "NO ! Those are
> considered Hazardous waste, and must be set out on
> the side for special
> handing as such".
> 
> Since then, I have salvaged a severely limed up, but
> otherwise good 20
> gallon aquarium with pumps, a couple 300 mhz
> computers.  I did it
> honorably and reformated the hard disk drives
> without trying to mine data.
>  The guy with the aquarium happened to be in his
> front yard when I
> stopped, so I asked the guym if he was really
> junking that.. he said
> Yep... and that he didn't want to mess with a garage
> sale. "Yep", I could
> haul it away.
> 
> On a garage sale once, I got a 4.5 foot tall
> blacksmith cone for $30 ...
> full asking price: I knew what it was worth, so that
> troubled my
> conscious: felt more like theft to me,  than hearing
> the story about
> saving a school from hazardous waste desposal fee.
> 
> Dann
> 
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