Dumpster diving

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since February 2007.
A man rummaging through a skip at the back of an office building in Central London
A man rummaging through a skip at the back of an office building in Central London

Dumpster diving (DD), also called Binning, D-Mart, Dumpstering, Garbing, Garbage picking, Garbage gleaning, Skip-raiding, Skipping, Tatting or Trashing, is the practice of sifting through commercial or residential trash to find usable items that have been discarded for being unusable by their owners, such as food, furniture, clothes, and metals. The term originates from the fanciful image of someone leaping into large trash bins, the best-known of which are produced under the name "dumpster". In practice, dumpster “diving” is more like fishing since most dumpsters can be accessed from outside without crawling in. A DD can range from people just walking past a dumpster, people with bicycles with panniers, people pushing carts, to people in large trucks. In rural areas and ancient agricultural societies, DD was similarly called gleaning and some medieval houses had "poor boxes" where still edible food was placed for the poor to take.

Traditionally, most people who resort to dumpster-diving do it out of economic necessity, such as the Karung guni, the Rag and bone man, and Junk man, as parodied in Sanford and Son. Others practice DD for various reasons like; thrill of the hunt seekers, people with creative outlet (They look for things to use in ways other than originally intended), students for discarded things to fix and reuse in experiments, and artists look for material in dumpsters. The interior designer Carol Tanzi (aka "Goddess of Garbage") uses re-cycled material in her designs[1] as does Vincent Jones, who creates art from discarded computer circuit boards and other found items.

There are also several ethical arguments that some believe justify dumpster-diving. One is that society is deplorably wasteful due to the high level of wastage in many supermarkets, bakeries, and shops -- wastage that is caused by efficiencies and inefficiencies created by Just In Time manufacturing, legal concerns, or other reasons.

Another belief is, since many poorer people cannot afford to buy "expensive" items at market price, any irregular, blemished, or damaged items should naturally be priced closer to their ability to pay. To dispose of these items is looked on by the poor as being economically inefficient and a hindrance to their ability to acquire goods that most people can afford. An example is discarded food that might have slight imperfections, that is near or exceed its use by date, or that is simply being replaced by newer stock. Many retailers are reluctant to sell this stock at reduced prices due to the belief that people will buy it instead of the higher priced newer stock; that extra handling time is required; and that there are liability risks.

For these and other reasons, massive levels of waste increase the ecological global footprint of society, while many people in that same society canot afford neccesities.

Perishable food items, unsuitable for sale, can often be acquired by dumpster diving at bakeries or grocery stores and “safely” used after removing the unusable bits and decontaminating. Offices, factories, department stores, and other commercial establishments also sometimes throw out nonperishable items that are irregular, were returned, have minor damages, or are replaced by newer items. Generally, the more perishable and inexpensive the item, the more likely it will be disposed of intact. Otherwise, most items tend to be in a state of disrepair that most will require some work by the dumpster diver to make the items usable.

Because computers have a short commercial life, many fully-functional and usable computers are dumped rather than donated because many non-profits and schools are unable or unwilling to work with used equipment. [2] Sometimes even their software is left intact (see "information diving"). Many organizations like Geeks Into The Streets, reBOOT, Free Geek and Computerbank try to collect and reuse old computers that are sold or given to the poor.

Contents

[edit] Overview

In the United States, Canada, and Europe, supermarkets, will routinely donate food according to a Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, or by health laws are required to discard food items before the expiration date, because of overstock, minor imperfections, spoilage, or blemishes.[citation needed] Often, this food can be made "safe" for consumption if proper decontamination and spoiled ruminates are removed.

Dumpster divers can be anything from a single spontaneous act upon seeing a useful item in the garbage to individuals who choose a low-impact lifestyle. For example freeganism, uses skills, acquired by those with few other options, to obtain goods or food. Others who deliberately choose to dive are private investigations or police for finding information and material for official purposes. 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 developed world. In many economically developing countries, food is rarely thrown away unless it is rotten. In many countries, charities collect excess food from supermarkets and restaurants and distribute it to the needy. Dumpster divers, Karung guni, and Rag and bone man in these countries may concentrate on looking for usable items 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. In the US Sanford and Son showed the life of a junk man.

Dumpster diving, taken to an academic level, is used as 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 recycling collection. People often go through dumpsters and other trash containers looking for cans, often soda cans, or other recyclable materials. In some places these can be sold to recycling plants or scrap yards. Recycling is also possible with other materials such as copper, lead, and other scrap metals. Because dumpsters are not a reliable source of income for the poor, some scrupleless “recyclers” go from diving to stripping buildings and other installations of their Copper pipes and wiring. This kind of scavenging has been reported in the US, the former Soviet Union and Argentina. This kind of activity produces a negative rather than a positive gain for society and creates unexpected causes like a very large fire in some Brooklyn waterfront warehouses in May of 2006. Some artists also collect recyclable materials for future use in their art.

[edit] Information diving

Main article: 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 sometimes usable for fraudulent purposes (see also so-called "identity theft" and physical information security)

Supposedly, information diving was more 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. 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. The 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.

[edit] 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 case in the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. Dumpster diving per se is probably legal when not specifically prohibited by state or local law.

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 United Kingdom, 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 "P.I. technique" in which dumpster diving or its equivalent "wastebasket recovery," figures prominently.

In Italy, a law issued in 2000 declared dumpster diving to be legal.

In Sweden, the contents of a dumpster is the property of the owner of the dumpster so taking items from a dumpster is technically theft.

There are limits to what can legally be taken from someone's trash. In a 1983 Minnesota case involving the theft of customer lists from a garbage can, Tennant Company v. Advance Machine Company[1], the owner of the discarded information was awarded $500,000 in damages.

[edit] Trivia

  • 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 a significant amount of its food from dumpster diving from the dumpsters at small markets and corporate grocery stores in UK.[3]
  • March 18, 2000, 55 Oscars reported stolen were found in a Los Angeles dumpster behind a grocery store. The salvage man, Willie Fulgear, 61, received a $50,000 reward and two tickets to the Oscars. Later, his reward money was stolen from a safe in his apartment.
  • In an interview in the May 29, 2006 issue of Newsweek, Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman was asked, "What's the weirdest meetup that's ever come to your attention?" He replied, "Dumpster-diving meetups are very popular...."

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/u/m/Dumpster_diving.html"
In other languages