Dumpster Diver Dan

 This question was asked of me recently. Here’s my answer: It’s TREASURE!! I know. I know. It’s very clich’e, but ” One man’s trash IS another man’s treasure!”. 

 Now to give this discussion some scale… I am not OCD or one of those hoarders like on TV. I do find excellent things in the trash (like perfectly fine furniture, clothing, household items, electronics and sporting goods) but I have a very normal life. My house is not cluttered and stacked floor to ceiling with items scrounged and such. My home is modestly furnished (with quite a few, but not all items from dumpsters).

 Now, aside from the few items I keep for my family’s personal use, what do I do with everything else? Ebay, Craigslist, Pawnshops, Computer & Electronic Repair Shops, Bicycle Shops, Used Furniture Stores, Scrap Yards,  I once found a busted up and grafitti laced electric guitar which I cleaned up and sold to a music store. Do I make a fabulous living doing all of this? Nope. But I do make a very nice second income. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to focus on Dumpster Diving and Scrapping full-time, but for now, I make good money, have lots of fun, and am able to constantly give wonderful presents to my family and friends, and make donations to local charities.  I also feel pretty good about the amount of items I am saving from the landfill.

  My father came to town for a visit this weekend! As has now become the usual for us, we spent most of the weekend Dumpster Diving! It actually kind of amazes me that we have finally found this common ground. We both really enjoy diving and get along great whenever we go together. Our relationship has become alot smoother than it ever was before. Being such different people in most aspects, finally having this closeness is very nice.

  I found a great deal of metal this weekend from scrap steel to lots of copper wiring. I found some great clothes for my wife and a couple of my daughters.  I even found a great book in fantastic shape.

  My dad found a lot of things he loves. He found a working cd player, a whole box of writable cds, a couple dozen picture frames in great condition and with the glass, and a whole roll (probably 1000 ft.) of coax cable. He tells me that he enjoys diving in my town with me much more than in his own town.  I would like to think that it’s because he enjoys spending the time with me, but it’s likely more along the lines of he doesn’t really find any good stuff in his town. Whichever the reason, I reap the benefit of quality time with my father.

  Now… our wives were not as pleased with our weekend activities. They don’t enjoy diving as much as we do. They were left at the house for most of the time Dad and I were out diving. That probably would have been ok but for the fact that the snow melting has made it far too mushy for my four children under 10 years of age to play outside. So they have had a bit of cabin fever and were stuck in the house all weekend with the wives. Oops. I’ll make it up to them.

 I had originally decided not to do this on my blog. Endorse other websites, that is. However, after having been registered on this site for several months and finding a great deal of useful info on Dumpster Diving, I’ve decided to go ahead and let people know how much I enjoy this great site.

 The site is:

www.dumpsterdiversparadise.com

 It is a wonderful site. It’s mostly discussion forums. I have found a lot of fellow divers for great discussions and also to post pics of our good finds.  You can find me there as dumpsterdiverdan.

 I don’t seem to get many comments on this blog other than spammers so I don’t know if very many people actually read this. However, I thought it important to spread the word about this excellent site. You should check it out.

P.S. You don’t have to register or log in to access any of the site content so you can look around and read the forums without registering.

 The answer you get may depend on where you ask the the question, or who answers it. On You-Tube, for example, you will find a few snippets from news programs that define Dumpster Diving as recovering food from dumpsters.  This is actually only a small aspect of Dumpster Diving. I think that the news programs gravitate towards this aspect because they consider it to be of shock value and therefore newsworthy. As I have pointed out in earlier posts on this blog, I myself do sometimes recover and eat food from dumpsters. I am not, however a Freegan. Freegans are a group of people who Dumpster Dive for almost All the food they consume. I believe  this is done mostly as a protest against commercial consumerism. Dumpster Diving for food is a valid aspect of the whole picture but does not encapsulate it.

 There are also those who Dumpster Dive to find items for their own personal use, whether furniture, kitchen items, appliances, books or any number of other household accoutrements. Some of these people dive out of necessity to fill their basic needs. Some dive as part of an overall frugal lifestyle, preferring not to pay for some things that they can get for free. Some dive for the fun of it, comparing it to treasure hunting. While these are all valid aspects, they also don’t fully define Dumpster Diving.

 There are those who Dumpster Dive for the financial possibilities. Many items in wide variety of catagories that are daily discarded are still worth money to someone. Having the time to figure out what things are worth and to whom can mean the possibility of a nice part-time income to some. There are even rumors, although I don’t have personal knowledge of, people who earn a nice full-time income from Dumpster Diving.

 There are those who Dumpster Dive for the simple act of recycling those items and materials discarded by others. Some people feel that to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills is an activity worthy of respect and admiration. Whether an item recovered from a dumpster is recycled directly (such as scrap metal or currogated cardboard) or is simply repurposed (like turning lumber scraps into a bookshelf or plant stand) the impact of pulling that item from the landfill cycle is definite and concrete.

 What is Dumpster Diving? To me it’s a little bit of many different aspects that when combined offer to me an improvement in financial security, a feeling of  friendship toward my planet, and a responsibility realized of safeguarding the future for my children. Not to mention, it’s fun and I like it!

 I’ve been very focused in my dumpster diving in recent months. I’ve been focusing primarily on my recycling efforts. Since July I have been looking mostly for copper to recycle for money. I’ve previously been quite successful with this aspect of my dumpster diving but have recently wanted to step up my effort.

 I’ve been curious for some time whether or not I could make a comfortable living Dumpster Diving full time. I’ve been focusing mainly on copper because it pays the most and is most abundant. While I’ve definately been working harder and more consistantly, it still has been been only in my spare time (I have a full time job and a family).  I am encouraged by the results of my efforts, however. With the money I’ve made since I started focusing on copper back in July, my family and I will be taking a vacation (our first in 3 years) next month.

  I have also decided to spread my effort and focus to include scrap steel. There have been recent spikes in the scrap steel prices that I find encouraging. I already have a small pick-up bed trailer that is quite useful for hauling scrap but it can only handle about a ton at a time. I have been looking for a double-axle flat bed or box bed trailer that can handle several tons (a used one of course).  With the recent encouraging results of my efforts I have decided that when my income from dumpster diving and scrapping surpass my income from my regular job, I will focus full time on diving and scrapping. To be clear; the ways I make money from diving and scrapping is to recycle for cash copper, brass, steel and aluminum. I also sell at regular garage sales any items that I find that are useful but I don’t need for my home.

Whether or not I will be successful in this endeaver is yet to be determined but I have hope. I would love to be able to provide for my family doing something I love.

  It was a very good diving weekend for me. Friday, I came upon a rarety. A local grocery store that usually compacts all refuse had a large construction dumpster under their loading dock. When I approached to get a better look, I noticed that the compactor was detached from the chute and partially disassembled. My natural assumption was that it was broken. At any rate, when I went to investigate the big dumpster I was shocked and amazed to see several large garbage bags stuffed with various chocolate candies. There were bags of candy bars across the entire brand spectrum. I found Hershey bars, Reese’s Cups, Hershey’s Dark bars, York Peppermint Patties, etc. There was probably about 400lbs. of candy. I only took one bag, and I gave it all away (with the exception of some Kitkats for my wife and Peppermint Patties for me). I did inform some of my diving friends so they could go get some too. I don’t imagine that much of it actually made it to the landfill.

  On Saturday my Dad and stepmom came to town to visit us. For the first time ever, I took my dad dumpster diving with me. He loved it. He found a lot of stuff he was very happy about. He always was a very handy guy and could fix or tinker out any problem, so a lot of the things he was interested in were raw materials and such. He also found a large box of country and gospel music tapes, and some excellent luggage. He was particularly pleased to find a perfectly good radio with cd player. It was a very good weekend for him for finds. I myself found a great deal of wiring, some good toys for my children and a couple of perfectly playing DVDs that I will add to my movie collection. My finds, though were not as important to me as being able to spend time with my dad doing something we both enjoy. There aren’t that many things we both like so being able to add to the list is great. So this weekend was very good for me on many levels.

Recently, I had another encounter with my Dumpster Diva (the hottie diver I recently blogged about). Once again she was dressed wonderfully scantily.

It’s very cool diving with her. Keep in mind that I am very happily married. But I do enjoy watching her dig through the dumpsters. She’s actually a pretty cool person, aside from being beautiful. She dives for a gruesomely wide assortment of items and therefore finds wonderful treasures just about everywhere she dives. I can talk with her about scrap prices, good locations, and recent finds. It’s nice to be able to do that. I guess that’s kind of the reason I enjoy blogging and posting to discussion forums so much.

I told her today about my blog. A couple of minutes later she asked if I had written about her. Maybe she’s psychic. I told her I had and invited her to check the blog out. I’m hoping she’s not completely creeped out by my having blogged about her. Because, aside from having a slight sensitivity to criticism about my writing, I like diving with her. Having her irritated or even angry at me would not be ideal.

Lately I’ve noticed that some places are taking active steps to discourage Dumpster Diving.

There are some legitimate reasons for retailers, for example, to purposely destroy or damage perfectly good merchandise before discarding it. One reason could be to discourage less than honest people from recovering the merchandise from the dumpster, then trying to return the items to the store for a refund or store credit.

But some grocery stores, I’ve noticed, have begun to slash open any bags of chips or cookies that they discard. Some stores have started sprinkling bleach over the dumpster contents each evening. Perhaps this could be a liability issue?

Then, of course, there’s wally-world. They are quite openly hostile toward divers. At least that’s how I interpret keeping your dumpsters under lock and key.

The point being that while I don’t really notice too much anti-diving sentiment in the general populace, retailers and other businesses seem to have started to take a dimmer view on the practice. Or am I being too negative? I suppose that there could be perfectly sensible reasons to each of the actions I’ve noticed. Perhaps I’m just too sensitive about these things because they directly inconvenience me?

I do both things and don’t really see a difference between them. Not one of any significance, anyway. There, evidently, are quite a few people out there who feel very differently. I recently started a discussion on a forum on eBay and was very surprised at the very rigid feelings of some over the issues associated with dumpster diving.

On the discussion thread I started I saw over and over that people indicated they had curb shopped before but never dumpster dived… and never would! This distinction was made many times. It was kind of interesting to me. As I said, I don’t see much of a difference. Many others felt quite strongly about making one, though. The thing that I found actually kind of funny was that the people who didn’t really see a difference between curb shopping and dumpster diving seemed to be the people who were staunchly against both practices! Interesting that their view was both similar and completely opposite to mine.

The discussion seems to be bringing out some very interesting issues. Some of which were old hat to me. Some are very different perspectives than my own (rigid) views. I am enjoying the discourse greatly.

That’s hard to say. I think there probably is… to a certain extent. When younger people see me diving, most smile and acknowledge me. Some even come to join in the fun. So it’s been my experience that younger people don’t seem to attach any social signifigance to the act of dumpster diving.

Older people, on the other hand, do seem to be made uncomfortable by dumpster diving. When I’ve been diving and noticed older people looking at me, most look quickly away and pretend they didn’t see me. I really don’t know if this is an attempt to spare me any embarassment that they think I might feel or if they themselves are embarassed. I suppose that being inclined to see the best in people, I would like to believe that it’s the former. Although there would be kindness of heart in an attempt to spare me embarassment, the point is moot. Insofar as I do not feel any embarassment at being spotted dumpster diving.

While I myself don’t feel embarassed or ashamed at dumpster diving, some people do give me looks that say loud and clear that they disapprove or even are disgusted. When I do catch one of those looks from someone, my feeling in response to that is usually pity. Pity for that person who doesn’t understand what fun I have; how lucrative it is, how frugally I live, and how financially stable I am as a result.

It really could be quite funny, I suppose, if I stopped to think about it. My lifestyle (yes diving is a lifestyle for me) has allowed me to become pretty secure financially in a very insecure environment of late. I own my home and have only a couple of years left on my mortgage. My payments are very small. I have ZERO credit card or other unsecured debt. Our mortgage is the only debt we have, yet my wife and four children certainly don’t go without. How many giving me a disapproving look can say they have done as well? Whoops! Straying off course.

As far as social stigma; You can never really control what other people are going to think so why worry about it? If someone gives you a disapproving look and you let it bother you, then the one with the real problem is you.