Dumpster diving

A man rummaging through a skip at the back of an office building in Central London

Dumpster diving, also called "dumpstering", "binning", "trashing", or "garbing", is a North American term to describe the practice of rummaging through commercial or residential trash to find useful free items that have been discarded. In the United Kingdom, the practice is referred to as "skipping." The term originates from the fanciful image of someone leaping into large rubbish bins, the best known of which are produced under the name "Dumpster". These are also known as "skips." In practice, dumpstering is more akin to fishing around than diving in. In most cases the objects most sought after are bottles or cans, as well a dumpster diver is usually accompanied by bicycle with cart.

Many people do dumpster diving not out of economic necessity, but for the thrill of the hunt or as an outlet of creativity by using things in another way tha intended or fixing up things. Some artists looks for material in dumpsters.

Food can often be acquired in this manner from bakeries or grocery stores. Offices, factories, department stores, and other commercial establishments also sometimes throw out nonperishable items that were returned or have minor damages.

Because computers have a commercial life of 18 months, many fully working and actually quite capable computers gets dumped. Sometimes the hard discs aren't erased (see "information diving"). Many organisations like Geeks Into The Streets, reBOOT and Computerbank try to collect and reuse old computers.

Overview

In the United States, Canada, and Europe, supermarkets routinely discard food items before the expiration date because of overstock, minor imperfections or blemishes. Often, this food is safe for consumption. It is considered good practice to wash any unpackaged food items.

Dumpster diving can be a spontaneous act upon seeing a useful item in the garbage, a conscious low-impact lifestyle choice (for example, as a part of freeganism), or a skill acquired by those with few other options to obtain goods or food. Dumpstering is also associated with "curbing", or rummaging through trash on city sidewalk curbs. Discarded furniture, electronics, appliances, books, and clothing are all commonly found.

Dumpster diving is practiced differently in countries whose commercial disposal practices are different from the United States'. In many economically developed countries, food is rarely thrown away unless it is rotten. Charities collect excess food from supermarkets and restaurants and distribute it to the needy. Dumpster divers in these countries may concentrate on looking for antiques or scrap materials to sell.

British television shows have even featured home renovations and decoration using salvaged materials. Changing Rooms is one such show, broadcast on BBC One. Recovery of still-useful items from discards is well-known in other cultures as well; James Fallows noted it in his book written about his time living in Japan. However, much of the richness attributed to dumpster diving in Japan ended with the collapse of the nation's economic bubble in 1990.

Dumpster diving is a tool for garbologists, who study the sociology and archeology of trash in modern life. There is a major outpost of academic garbology at the University of Arizona, directed for some decades by William Rathje.

Another activity associated with dumpster diving is collecting cans. This is when people will go through dumpsters and pick out the alumminum cans, usually soda cans. These can be sold at some recycling plants. This is also done with copper, lead, and other scrap metals. Some practice this activity in an attempt to hoard many items for future use in artistic endeavors.

Information diving

In addition to offering useful items like food and clothing, dumpsters can also be a source of information. Files, letters, memos, photographs, IDs, passwords, credit cards and more can be found in dumpsters. This is a result of the fact that many people never consider that sensitive items they throw in the trash may be recovered. Such information, when recovered, is clearly succeptable to being used for fraudulent purposes (see also so-called "identity theft")

Supposedly, information diving was common in the 1980s due to lax security; when businesses became aware of the need for increased security in the early 1990s, sensitive documents were shredded before being placed in dumpsters. In any case, there is still considerable Internet activity on the subject of dumpster diving, so it is unlikely to have stopped with the widespread introduction of document shredding. Security mythology has it that curious hackers or malicious crackers commonly use this technique, but this may be an urban legend as social engineering is often easier.

Dumpster diving is commonly practiced by "watchdog" organizations seeking information on groups they are investigating. Trinity Foundation successfully used this technique to report on the activities of televangelist Robert Tilton, and has also obtained information on Benny Hinn using this practice. Labor unions in the United States also use this technique among others to determine who works for a company. This is a crucial step to organizing a workplace.

Legal status

Because dumpsters are usually located on private premises, dumpster diving is illegal in some parts of the United States, though the law is enforced with varying degrees of rigor. The California v. Greenwood Supreme Court case in the U.S. held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. Dumpster diving per se is probably legal when not specifically mentioned in state or town statutes.

Police (and possibly other) searches of dumpsters and like discards are not violations; evidence seized in this way has been permitted in many criminal trials. The doctrine is less well established in regard to civil litigation. Similarly in the UK, while dumpster diving in England and Wales may qualify as theft within the Theft Act 1968, or as common-law theft in Scotland, there is very little enforcement in practice.

Private investigators have written books on "PI technique" in which dumpster diving, or its equivalent "wastebasket recovery," figure prominently. In Italy, a law issued at the beginning of the new century declared dumpster diving to be legal.

Trivia

Popular rap/rock group from the early- to mid-nineties Pseudohoodlum glorified the art of dumpster diving with their song "Dumpster Dive" which stated that one can find all that is needed to exist and feel alive "in the dumpster." Lyrics included "Jump right off the vintage scale, I know a place where there's always a sale... in the dumpster."

In the 1960s, Jerry Schneider recovered several instruction manuals from The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, and used the information to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of telephone equipment.

The Castle Infinity game, after its shutdown, was brought back from the dead by rescuing its servers from the trash.

Recently, dumpster diving has been popularized in the book Evasion, published by Crimethinc.

Food Not Bombs is an anti-hunger organization that gets pretty much all of its food from dumpster diving. The food from the dumpsters are often located at small markets and corporate grocery stores.

Dumpster diving

Overview

Information diving

Legal status

Trivia

See also

Further reading

External links