Anyone here been dumpster diving?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

Find anything good, like a gold Rolex, Faberge egg, or a functioning Cray supercomputer? :shrug:

[bleedingheart]

1. not dumpsters...but I will pick stuff out of people's trash if they

are throwing something good away...

furniture that can be painted...or even clay pots for plants...what a waste to throw away!

[gkdmaths]

2. who hasnt?

I know this girl who brings dumpster-dived bagels to school/work and tried to offer them to people. Students will eat them.

I used to go dive behind seattle bookstores on days I knew they were purging. got some great textbooks!

[bigwillq]

6. I've never done it.

:shrug:

[gkdmaths]

7. Well, you should!

if you want to.

;)

my advise is to avoid the spaghetti shops.

[bigwillq]

9. I have no urge to do that.

I actually think it's quite gross.

[gkdmaths]

22. it is quite gross

Thats why I only hit bookstores garbages. Do you know how much money you can save??

That, and I do have a significant nonfiction fetish. :7

[bigwillq]

23. Well a bookstore dumpster

probably wouldn't be so bad. I never thought about hitting up dumpsters that belong to retail stores.
I still probably wouldn't do it but at least it should be cleaner.

[gkdmaths]

25. I remember once I was so excited

to have found one of the texts on enzyme kinetics that I had...


...oh, nevermind. ;)

[bigwillq]

26. Well good for you.

Glada you found something you were looking for. :)

[WritingIsMyReligion]

3. My dad went in after a partially-cleaned striper in a dumpster once.

You have not felt queasy until you've been subjected to half-rotten sea bass for a twenty-minute car ride home.

:puke:

[Runcible Spoon]

4. WOW I read that as "partially cleaned STRIPPER" LOL

which certainly gives a new angle to "dumpster diving" :rofl: sorry, I'm a bit buzzed here...

[WritingIsMyReligion]

5. ...

:spray:

:rofl:

Whatcha buzzed on? ;)

[Runcible Spoon]

8. just a few rum n cokes...

get me on some percocet and see how wierd things get :evilgrin: :toast:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

12. I'm not sure I want to.

:rofl:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

11. FISH seems like the LAST THING EVER that should be taken out of garbage,

if indeed anything should be rescued at all!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

13. My dad's a recreational lobsterman.

Striper is golden for lobster bait. And free striper is a bonus, apparently! :7

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Okay, in this context, maybe makes a little more sense. I was having a

vision of an uncomfortable dinner table scene.

"What's for dinner?"

"Fish soup."

etc.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

15. LOL--No way in hell would I eat that.

:rofl:

[sbj405]

10. Better yet - anyone a freegan?

http://freegan.info/


I know someone who dumpster dives at the local supermarket for of all things - meat. :puke:

[LeftyMom]

16. Ack! Stupid freegans.

:argh:

[Dangerously Amused]

27. Why do you not like Freegans?

I know nothing about them except what I just read on their website, so I freely acknowledge my naivety. But I thought the concept sounded pretty decent. They seem socially responsible and pretty well organized, and name anti-animal cruelty as one of their crusades. I know you are usually well informed on such matters and I value your opinion, so I am curious as to what you would find to dislike...?

[LeftyMom]

29. Partly the name, which I find deceptive

The term "freegan" is a combination of free and vegan.

The problem is that most freegans aren't vegan. Some will only pay for vegan items, but most will scavenge anything whether it has animal products or not. To do so sends the message that animal flesh and reproductive tissues are resources that can be wasted, rather than stolen goods that only belong to the animals who created them.

To the extent that there are better alternatives to be scavenged, they exist only because of those who create a paying market for those alternatives. Those who want to keep animal cruelty out of the food supply would create more change by adding to the market for sustanable alternatives rather than attempting to opt out of the system while still living off of it's cruelties and excesses.

I don't mind dumpster diving and other forms of recycling at all (though being a neat freak myself I'm not likely to spend quality time with the dumpster anytime soon) I just don't want to see people confuse the issue of veganism by borrowing the term for non-vegan behaviors.

[Dangerously Amused]

30. Could an argument be made

...that to NOT recycle an animal-based product would be even more of an ethical lapse? For example I am thinking of a situation in which a dumpster diver finds a pair of leather shoes and has the choice to either salvage and use them, or leave them to be eternally interred in the city dump.

I am thinking of the Native American's ethical/religious committment to use every part of an animal they killed, out of respect for the animal. To them, I think, leaving part of an animal unused would be sacriledge. Likewise in this hypothetical, even though another killed the animal and caused the unneeded/unwanted/discarded shoes, wouldn't it be wasteful and disrespectful to the animal to leave the shoes unused? In that case the argument might be made that NOT salvaging the shoes would effectively send the message that animal flesh and tissues are resources that can be wasted, because the one chosing to not salvage the shoes would be the one condemning them to actual waste.

I'm not trying to start an argument, this is an issue I've long struggled with and I have never really found a comfortable answer.

[Dangerously Amused]

18. Hey! Freegan is pretty cool!

Never heard of it before now, thanks for the heads up & the link.


:)

[Redstone]

17. No.

Redstone

[ncrainbowgrrl]

19. yeah- when the college students move out of their dorms in may.

I've gotten (all functional) 13" TV, scanner, lamps, books, etc...

[txwhitedove]

20. Yes, and yes.... and did the Freegan thing long ago.

To do 'Freegan' now, I would have to go back to living in a VW van.

:hippie:

[Xipe Totec]

21. Why, yes, yes I have!

Retrieved:

One Red Azalea,

a half dozen black knight tulips,

three white peonies.

(a company was re-landscaping, and tossing out the old stuff).

[Haole Girl]

24. No, but I've screamed my lungs out, more than once

when a couple would drive by with their pick up truck and dump bags of trash into their pick-up from our old apartment complex dumpster! It infuriated me, because I could tell the only thing they were after was a new identity (or two..or, three...).

[Vidar]

28. Used to get a lot of stage set material that way in my theater days.

[Blue Diadem]

31. Why yes I have..not exactly in the dumpster though..they were sitting

outside it. Four very nice wooden chairs with upholstered seats were sitting there. The seats were tattered..but a $6.00 upholstery remnant took care of that..along with some new foam cushion. I gave them a coat of paint and my son used them in his kitchen for a few years.

I was quite amazed at what people threw away. We lived in a mobile home park when DH worked in Michigan for a few years..and the amount of perfectly good furniture that was thrown out shocked me. We didn't have a use for it or I would have taken it. I could still kick myself for being too chicken to climb into the dumpster to get the beautiful garden arbor that was pitched..

[Blue_In_AK]

32. No, but I've panhandled.

[texanwitch]

33. Yes.

I was visiting a friend at her apartment and a couple was having a wedding shower.

After the shower the couple threw away most of the the things they received, brand new stuff.

We got it out and gave it to people we knew who could use it.

This was brand new stuff still in plastic.