Dumpster-diving forum
June 27, 2005 6:20 PM   Subscribe

Dumpster World - "Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource." [via Information Nation, which also links to that story of a woman who was recently unloaded into a garbage truck]
posted by mediareport (19 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I understand that it's disgustingly wasteful, the amount of stuff that we throw away, but there are people homeless by circumstance who are scavenging for that stuff. I imagine they veiw punker kids dumpster diving on a lark (or as some kind of muddled "statement") as competion rather than kindred souls.
posted by jonmc at 6:25 PM on June 27, 2005


Excellent, thanks for this! One of the chapters in Mongo: Adventures in Trash was about Dumpster divers. (Garage sales are my thing but I have been known to retrieve things from Dumpsters)
posted by mlis at 7:23 PM on June 27, 2005


I understand that it's disgustingly wasteful, the amount of stuff that we throw away, but there are people homeless by circumstance who are scavenging for that stuff

If you really understood how much food is tossed out of grocery stores, then you wouldn't be worrying about homeless folks getting mad at "punker kids" as competition. Besides, whatever point you have also applies to desperately poor folks and thrifting in general. Unless you're claiming that folks who aren't living on the edge of subsistence have no right to shop at thrift stores or salvage perfectly good/slightly bruised food from grocery store dumpsters - a ridiculous assertion - then you don't seem to have a very well-thought-out point here.
posted by mediareport at 8:03 PM on June 27, 2005


If you really understood how much food is tossed out of grocery stores, then you wouldn't be worrying about homeless folks getting mad at "punker kids" as competition

Actually, I spent a large chunk of my life working in grocery stores, but feel free to continue talking out your ass.
posted by jonmc at 8:20 PM on June 27, 2005


Then why the heck "imagine" a state of competition between imaginary homeless and imaginary folks who dive "on a lark"? Sorry, but it just didn't make sense as a first reaction, and seemed kind of knee-jerkish.

But whatever. We react how we react, I suppose.
posted by mediareport at 8:22 PM on June 27, 2005


Oh, and btw, if you actually spend time at the forum I linked, you'll find things like this from a number of posters: "If I'm coming back from a dive with food, I always offer some to a homeless person, being sure to tell them exactly where and how I got it."
posted by mediareport at 8:34 PM on June 27, 2005


The chapter above that I mentioned featured shops in Manhattan throwing out perfectly good strawberries dipped in chocolate, loaves of bread baked the same day, and all kinds of goodies. Some of the shopkeepers even had regular "customers" (some of them homeless). The shopkeepers would set the discarded food items next to the trash in containers rather than just tossing them into the dumpsters b/c they knew their "customers" would be stopping by.
posted by mlis at 8:35 PM on June 27, 2005


Hey we Trash-or-Treasure scavangers are proud!
You and your non-digging-through-the-trash-of-others-to-get-at-all-the-good-stuff ways will never change us.
posted by Balisong at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2005


I understand that it's disgustingly wasteful, the amount of stuff that we throw away, but there are people homeless by circumstance who are scavenging for that stuff. I imagine they veiw punker kids dumpster diving on a lark (or as some kind of muddled "statement") as competion rather than kindred souls.

No, no they don't. I've gotten though many lean times by hitting up dumpsters as my primary food source, and on the rare occasions that I would run into homeless folks we would divy up the spoils and maybe drink a beer in an alley afterwards.

Hell, there's a Sara Lee dumpster nearby that disposes of enough bread to feed a small village. Competition isn't really much of an issue.
posted by cmonkey at 8:59 PM on June 27, 2005


all the punker kids i've known who dumpster dive (and taught me to) did it because they were hungry, not to make a "statement" or "on a lark."

i'm starting to wonder how often you leave your house and actually talk to other humans, jonmc.
posted by RedEmma at 9:57 PM on June 27, 2005 [1 favorite]


Get a job, you fuckin' hippie!
posted by jonmc at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2005


To elaborate: Your statement ( "i'm starting to wonder how often you leave your house and actually talk to other humans, jonmc.") is a great illustration of how ideological zealots are very similar to fundamentalist Christians, they assume that anyone who thinks that they are ridiculous merely hasn't heard the beautiful gospel. Guess what, I have, and I wasn't impressed. You have a heretic in your midst. Not to mention anyone referring to themselves as "Red," in this post-Soviet, post-Red China age has already revealed themselves as clueless.

Unless you're claiming that folks who aren't living on the edge of subsistence have no right to shop at thrift stores

If I buy something at a thrift store, and in lean times I have, the money still goes to an organization helping those less fortunate then myself. Taking food out of a dumpster dosen't work that way, it's literally taking food out of someone's mouth. And gutterpunks are still homeless and poor by choice. That's a whole different kettle of fish than arriving there by circumstance.
posted by jonmc at 4:02 PM on June 28, 2005


Now you've chosen poverty
You did it for the sake of being hip
Begging for a dollar
Never doubting for a moment
Your bohemian indignence
And you wonder why the folks
In your run down neighborhood
Don't recognize you as a kindred soul
'Cause they know you gotta a bed
In a sunny sub-division
Anytime you wanna run home
posted by Snyder at 6:19 PM on June 28, 2005


the money still goes to an organization helping those less fortunate then myself

Wow, talk about missing the point. Not all thrift stores donate proceeds to charity, jonmc, but the deeper issue is thriftiness in general, and who's entitled (for lack of a better word) to scrounge in the street for mainstream society's cast-offs. You're being silly.

And gutterpunks are still homeless and poor by choice.

Oh, I get it. You're not being silly; you're being deliberately obtuse. Never mind. You don't have a point here, and your attempts to justify your ignorant knee-jerk reaction before spending time at the link are increasingly moronic. See ya in another thread.
posted by mediareport at 8:08 PM on June 28, 2005


Wow, mediareport, you sure told him.
posted by Snyder at 9:17 PM on June 28, 2005


Am I supposed to notice you now? Ok.

*watches*

So, when are you going to do something interesting?
posted by mediareport at 9:18 PM on June 28, 2005


I spend a fair amount of time clambering around on dumpsters, and always have. My apartment is almost completely furnished with dumpster/street finds. I've only ever encountered conflicts when the stuff in question wasn't food, but records/books/etc.. or just really garbage, oddly enough.

"And gutterpunks are still homeless and poor by choice. That's a whole different kettle of fish than arriving there by circumstance."

Some are homeless by choice and some are not, and that goes for both "gutterpunks" and others.

I never worked at a grocery store, but I know of 2 dumpsters I would ever take stuff from. One gets filled with about 30 pounds of bagels every wednesday, and the other gets at least 40 pounds of tortillas every other Sunday I think.. The other night I walked past a place on Avenue A with a 30 gallon trash can filled with over-ripe cantelopes. Garden of eden throws out a tremendous amount of stuff, probably because everything has to be perfect for their clientele. I don't usually look for food, the big containers are more my style, but I wouldn't say there's a shortage.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 10:14 PM on June 28, 2005


So, when are you going to do something interesting?

Oh, you wound me!

When are you going to back up your points, heck, when are you going to make a coherent one?

Let me know when you can respond with something more substantive than "Your totally wrong, moron!"
posted by Snyder at 10:46 PM on June 28, 2005


Taking food out of a dumpster dosen't work that way, it's literally taking food out of someone's mouth.

Isn't it literally taking food out of a dumpster? Oh, what a savage beating that modest adverb gets...
posted by tannhauser at 8:02 AM on July 1, 2005


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