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Comment by eddy_chan | Hacker News Reader

Where I live we have 'council clean-up' days. It's a designated day once per year you can leave a reasonable amount of rubbish outside your house including old furniture, tools, utensils etc etc. The good thing is it's widely advertised and if you sort your stuff out properly and lay it out in an organised manner, lots of amateur collectors will come and take it away to re-sell or re-use leaving only a small amount of true rubbish for the council to actually pick up (3 days later than the advertised day).

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I am fortunate to live in a country where there are lots of people below me on the totem pole. There is a delighted recipient for literally everything we have outgrown.

Pretty much everyday is council day here - you can leave whatever you like, whenever you like, by the kerb and it'll be gone by lunchtime. While it's painful to see so much need, it's gratifying that everything finds a new home where it will be used.

[broken stuff is especially in demand - it can be fixed and reused - there's an active trade in collecting broken appliances. Large stuff, like furniture will be collected by charity organisations.]

> you can leave whatever you like, whenever you like, by the kerb and it'll be gone by lunchtime.

I used to live in the SF bay area, and a good amount of items would be gone as you described. Items I couldnt sell on CL likely ended up on someone else's CL account who had more time to sell (I was moving) .

I suspect a surprising amount of stuff put on the street ends up with hoarders.

If I am putting stuff on the street, I try to trickle it out over the day, to spread the love, and hopefully avoid it all going to one person. The best is when it goes to someone who obviously needs it: perhaps a recent refugee immigrant, or a broke-arse single mum.

Picking up “valuable” stuff is a vice, so I try to only collect what is immediately useful to me or friends. It is however surprising the junk that people will take.

Me too with a sad twist: no matter how often I put a sign on my council kerbside collection e-waste saying "works" some metal scavenger on a copper hunt cuts the powercord and moves on. They're trashing value to extract the one bit they care about.

If it were actually valuable they wouldn't do that.

Different people hold different values, humanity isn't a hive mind yet

They'd pick it up and resell it. What, it's too difficult to find the person who would want it and be willing to pay? Then it isn't actually valuable.

Do you know the value of every object in existence?

Value is a word which is used in two senses. One is yours: what $ can I get for it. The other is use-value: the object can be used to perform it's role.

What they do, to extract $ value, is destroy use-value. The use-value didn't interest them, but waking at 4am and driving round before anyone ELSE sees the copper and takes it, interests them mightily. Consequently, anyone who is interested in finding things, finds broken things, not useful things.

In Amsterdam we have a Facebook Group called "Amsterdam Deelt/Geeft (Shares/Gives)" with 40k+ members. Almost anything you put up there is picked up within 24hrs by a very happy new owner!

I must have given a way over 50 items through this page. It is really nice that you can see the happiness of the person who will benefit from what you don't need anymore.

I use Nextdoor/Craigslist and put stuff up for Free or take it to the thrift store nearby.

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