On Dumpster Diving (1991) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

On Dumpster Diving (1991) [pdf]

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58 pointsmitchbob18 comments

Great read that brings back some strong memories. Used to dumpster dive extensively thanks to the 2008 collapse. Found all manner of things - passports, computers, cameras, furniture, clothing. Still have a now-unused digital camera from 18 years ago (the original memory card had a picture of some guys mooning the photographer) and a pair of jeans that are still going strong a decade later.

While I agree that can scroungers often make an absolute mess of things, I think it's unfair to say they "are drug addicts and winos." Although I do appreciate the highbrow grimace of a fellow dumpster diver!

I've paid rent from redeemed dumpstered cans and bottles. I've paid rent from furniture thrown away and fixed, then sold on Craigslist. From thrown away computers and other such things, and much more. One sale was from my nextdoor neighbor (who liked to be loud late at night). After cleaning out the ungodly amount of dust and removing an enormous amount of malware using Malware Bytes and other tools, I sold it for $45. My favorite sale was a ratty old computer chair that I found in my apartment complex dumpster then sold the same day for $10 to someone else living in the same apartment complex.

I was fortunate to have direct access to a god-tier dumpster kept fully stocked by college kids.

If you're thinking of trying dumpster diving, my advice is: wear good shoes - the insides of a dumpster are sharp, dark, and uneven. You'll find out the rest along the way. Happy hunting.

This, same experience it's fun but there is a tipping point when it is not effective. It's def an experience everyone should try sometime though. Really teaches you about value and opportunity.

I’ve always been tempted, but I almost worry I’d start obsessing over “the next find” as well as hoarding. While I’m (maybe?) 75% kidding, I do already have a garage half full of my stuff over the years that I can’t bring myself to throw away and am planning to fix and sell/gift/donate.

It’d be great if there were a more formal delineation, at the point of disposal, between “pure trash” (no value, even as scrap) and “things others may extract value from” (unwanted, fixable, etc).

I had a friend...really a jewel of a man...who made a living this way until he just couldn't cache any more stuff. so he used to do the rounds in the dead of night and during the day would visit a slew of local artists and ask 'you want this?'. I took some stuff I probably shouldn't have, but found a new home for it eventually.

I got 50 different hammers, a steel materials cart, a hand truck, ots of old decorative brass, other hand tools. I got to dig through the contents of a large marine electronics parts warehouse as it was getting scrapped out (also got some old brass enclosures out of that)...colored glass gels for lights...it goes and on.

he got his fix without having to fill up more uhauls, and a whole bunch of people had Christmas every day

I spent years "curb shopping" trash set out for pickup in a dense university town, 4 nights a week, a few hours at a time. I found around 100 PCs, and numerous more interesting items.

Dumpsters and food seemed too risky. I figured that one cut, animal bite, poisoning, or misunderstanding could wipe out all the profits of an entire dumpster diving career.

Even sticking to the curb, in the city, you have to be wary of wildlife (rats, skunks, possums, raccoons), muggers, and aggro drunks, as well as of contaminating your home (bed bugs, roaches, spiders). And, at the end of the repair&flipping pipeline, if you're selling a lot of used items, you'll probably realize there's some percentage of sketchy buyers.

I'm oddly proud of accomplishments in the trash sector during some lean times, but I can't recommend it to anyone who doesn't need the money. I would've rather had a well-paying career at the time, and spent the same amount of evening time building things

I'd thought this would be about dumpster diving for computers/electronics, rather than for food.

If you're interested in doing some dumpster diving for computers/electronics - just take some old electronic junk to your local e-waste facility and drop it off, then look in the bins of e-waste and pick out what you'd like and take it home - it's only going to be destroyed anyway. You can find some amazing and weird electronic stuff that people just chuck away as well as lots of things like analog TVs, laptops and desktops and all sorts of gear. Every now and then you can find a vintage computer.

As a broken-stuff enthusiast in California, I have never seen an e-waste place would let you just go through their bins and take stuff home. Where do you go?

You have to take some electronic stuff to drop off - that's the key - where I live you can find e-waste outside the front of people houses waiting for the council to come get it. Pick it up and put it in your car boot to take to the e-waste facility.

I go to the e-waste facility and just open the boot of the car and drop off the ewaste I bought and if there's something interesting I put it in the boot. Give and take.

There's no-one watching - I guess that depends on the e-waste facility, but I've never seen anyone watching. No doubt if the workers there saw you doing it they would object because that's not the purpose of the e-waste facility.

I don't feel like it's stealing or doing anything wrong because the stuff in there is destined to be crushed.

Maybe try a range of different e-waste dropoff points till you find one that works.

The one I go to (in Australia) - last time I went it had four giant bins stacked full of stuff. Frustratingly the e-waste was closed because it was so full so I couldn't pick through it. I could see it was full of computers and stuff.

It's official in Copenhagen (possibly more of Denmark), although it will have been unofficial for much longer.

> Residents of Copenhagen can recycle their waste at a recycling station or a collection point. A collection point is smaller, only accepts certain types of recyclable waste and is accessible by foot only. Both types are staffed and most have a “swap stand” where you can donate or collect items which are still usable. [1]

In addition, most apartment blocks have a small e-waste bin. That's big enough for something like a computer screen or laptop; larger things should be taken to the recycling station.

I fished a MacBook Air out of my block's bin, and sold it online for €150 or so. I kept a Kindle I repaired, and gave an old iPad to a friend. This was a couple of years ago, I think there's either now someone else looking in the bin for good stuff, or a wasteful neighbour has moved away.

(A typical apartment block has bins for cardboard, paper, metal, mixed plastic, electronics, batteries, glass, hazardous waste, food (for compost) and non-recyclable waste.)

[1] https://international.kk.dk/live/housing/settling-into-your-...

Reminds me of this:

HalTed in Silicon Valley used to have bins of broken motherboards. The sign above read:

"Guaranteed non-working. If yours works, bring it back and we'll exchange it for one that doesn't."

Oh I miss HalTed, Haltek, and Weird Stuff Warehouse. I managed to drop in to WSW on a business trip just weeks before it closed... it had barely changed in a decade, which was a little sad. I would have liked to see newer surplus!

In 2020 i got a 27" mid-2011 iMac with maxed out specs (i7, 16gb, 256gb ssd, 2tb hdd) this way (I was dumping my electronics there when I noticed some guy unloading the iMac).

Of course at home I found out why it was dumped... the left half of the screen's backlight was defunct, turned out to be a torn off connector that I could resolder and it had the infamous radeon gpu issue: flickering, distortions and crashes depending on the chip temperature. Fixed that by rom hacking [1] a dell nvidia quadro MXM-card off ebay for 30€ and replacing the radeon module.

I sold both the broken radeon mxm-module and the working iMac for 35€ and 380€. Succeeding with the repair was very rewarding, it will run for another couple years, I learned a few things along the way and made some buck.

[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card...

For context, the author of this piece passed away recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/books/lars-eighner-dead.a...

The author, Lars Eighner, was a frequent and eloquent contributor to a Usenet newsgroup I participated in ~20 years ago. Sorry to learn of his passing.

> No matter how careful I am I still get dysentery at least once a month

I'm interested in ways to minimize food waste but I wouldn't be willing to get "dysentery" on a regular basis. I wonder if avoiding meat / animal products entirely would help make this practice safer. There are people who dumpster dive by choice rather than by necessity although I've never done it for food.

Used to do a lot of this in Glasgow in the mid-late 00s. Certain supermarkets were the best as they plastic-wrapped everything they had. Plus it was cold out. 5 of us would head down, do the rounds, then converge on the flat to cook a massive stew that would last days. Good times.

> an unboxed pizza does not exist

This article reads as if Dostoyevsky wrote it.

Every time I've gone dumpster diving I've been amazed.

Food, stuff and hacking.

We went to a site hoping for manuals and got a literal password list instead.

If you have time and not money a lot of electronics gets thrown out with simple fixes.

Bakers throw out a lot of food. I'm big on food safety, and I think this is a good way to teach yourself. Learn the basics, and about 'use by' and 'best before' dates.

Give it a go.

(I get this article is about homelessness and I'm not pretending it'll help understand that at all, but it's important to explore the world, I think that helps with a lot of things. Throwing out good food is important as a society for supply chain resilience and food safety, it's not going to help with homelessness)

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