Has anyone ever been dumpster diving?

[Purplependant222]

An Instagram account I follow said her and her partner look in the bins behind DIY stores as they’ve found quite a few decent things for their renovations.

I always presumed they’d be locked/cctv/everything spoiled/sent back to suppliers.

I guess with lockdown I’m grasping at things to do..

@Purplependant222

An Instagram account I follow said her and her partner look in the bins behind DIY stores as they’ve found quite a few decent things for their renovations.

I always presumed they’d be locked/cctv/everything spoiled/sent back to suppliers.

I guess with lockdown I’m grasping at things to do..

No but I wish I could

There are a lot of American YouTubers who dumpster dive and find thousands of dollars worth of stuff. One guy goes to posh housing estates and picks up all sorts that people leave out for collectors.

I think there is one lady here but she has been told off by police, she was diving behind a M&S and the amount of stuff they throw is shocking.

I dont think the law is very keen here.

But if you do like a freebie, Freecycle, Freegle and the Olio app is brilliant. Stuff for free without the threat of police!

I run a food bank that mainly runs on food from supermarkets that would otherwise have gone in the bin. We collect about a tonne a week from local shops.

An acquaintance in a partner organisation quite literally dumpster dives behind a particular branch of M&S and gets £100+ worth of stuff each evening.

When I was a child, my dad had an arrangement to collect the wood boxes (the sort tomatoes and citrus fruit was delivered in) from the two supermarkets in town as my parents used them to grow plants in for their bedding plant business. As part of that, he'd have a good rummage in the skips every night, and I have very happy memories of the food that came home! Best day (in the days of no Sunday trading) was Saturday when the Waitrose patisserie counter was cleared and they'd chuck it all in one big white plastic bag and if he timed it right to get there before other stuff went on top, it was glorious. Being allowed to eat just the top of several cream slices stands out!

I would definitely avoid food. Yuk. Food from a bin? Unless starving or extremely desperate then that's madness.
You have no idea why that food is in the bin. Could have been recalled because of something being found in it, could be contaminated.

A friend that works in a large supermarket says anything left at the end of the night that is still ok for consumption is donated to food charities.

But then there's folk who think eating roadkill is a good idea.

I couldn't tell you where the bins are belonging to big stores around here. I assume locked up round the back.

@Needsmustnow

So, more like commercial bins behind food shops?

I'm shocked to find myself in my 40s peering in to skips for something that might be useful down on the allotment.

Yes but not just food shops, almost all shops have general waste and recycling bins, usually round the back somewhere.

when we had our extension built we budgeted for 5 skips, think we only needed two in the end as very morning half the stuff would be gone.
I was once sorely tempted by discarded store Christmas decorations round the back of Boots. They were lovely baubles and wreaths. When I got a bit closer I realised that they were a lot bigger than they looked when 10ft up in the air and would look a bit daft in my normal house. I do regret that a little bit tbh.

The times I have hired a skip for clearing out and had it on the drive people have knocked on door and asked permission to take things.
It is brilliant because you can can throw more stuff out.
Although some of things that were taken! A totally worn , hairy cat tower!

I have finally joined Olio on the back of this thread.

I've taken stuff out of skips. A friend of mine really scored when he spotted a huge curtain in a naice skip. Once cleaned, it was a 20 foot high original William Morris. I've also been with people dumpster diving outside supermarkets - lots of highly edible best befores which supplemented their income, but this was ten years ago. A number of supermarkets have got cacanny under pressure and now distribute best before and use by to charities for eg homeless but there's still a lot of waste.

I haven’t but when DH and I moved last February we decided not to take our dining table and chairs. It was in perfect condition but only seated two and we wanted something bigger as we were moving from a flat to a house.

We put it outside and, as I’d hoped, it was gone within an hour. I hope someone is enjoying it!

(I will point out that there was a space at the side of the flats where everyone in the street left their large stuff and the council did an uplift every couple of weeks, so leaving it there was allowed!)

When I was younger, (school age) I used to go through the schools bin during the summer holiday and get loads of new stationary

I don't have the guts to do it now but I'd love too especially after recently watching loads of YouTube videos of dumpster diving and all the good stuff they find

I've never rummaged around in someone's bins, but where I live in the US, it's usual practice to put larger household items by the curb for trash collection. I once discovered some very nice wooden window blinds this way. Took them home, and they fit several of our windows perfectly.

There's a show on the TV when some annoying woman turns up at a council tip and grabs stuff off people as they are about to chuck it then recycles it into something. I think they say at the start that you can't just do that.
That programme is so annoying!

@Kotbullar

There's a show on the TV when some annoying woman turns up at a council tip and grabs stuff off people as they are about to chuck it then recycles it into something. I think they say at the start that you can't just do that. That programme is so annoying!

That woman in particular! So she accosts people at the tip (but that's not actually allowed as they state in the show) then she takes their stuff off them. The stuff is always quite good and nothing like the old crap I see at the tip. I think it's all a fix.

Then once she's upcycled it she's back around to the person who was throwing it away to give them some cash and she's sooo smug about it.

If you do it, please please be considerate.
It’s a flipping nightmare to drive up to my shop and find all the bins emptied and the bags split all over the floor and I have to clean it up. Even worse if it’s raining!

@jb7445

When I was a kid (and pretty impoverished) we used to get bags of thrown out stuff from the bins of the local supermarket. Like fruit just on the best before date or chocolate multipacks where the bag had split. Had a great relationship with the guy who worked there and it helped us massively in some hard times.

Then management changed and they started pouring bleach over all the bags of food so nobody could have it. So incredibly wasteful and spiteful.

I'm glad I can't imagine what goes on in the head of the sort of person who would rather precious, usable food was destroyed than given to someone. There should be a special place in hell for people like that, they are disgusting.

@jb7445

And yes as an adult I have 'dumpster dived' and so have most of my friends. Why wouldn't you take something that's otherwise going to landfill?

I know right? Like it's literally going to be ploughed into the ground to pollute it, saving and using it is a moral good. I've found brand new saucepans, lampshades, clothes, wine, beer, as well as all kinds of luxury food with a short date or damaged packaging.

@KenAdams

Er, no - Salisbury anyone?!

Definitely don’t pick up ‘perfume’

A shop I worked in used to make us destroy food we were throwing out because it had gone out of date. This was because they were worried that they could be sued if someone took the food and ate it and became ill. I have no idea if this could legally happen, but the shop was obviously concerned enough about it. So to the pp who said about stuff have bleach poured on it, it might not have been done out of spite.

As more said - sometimes it’s (national, even) store policy. They are getting better though.

my dd has got some great things out of skips, it is quite a normal thing for her and her friends to do, she has mirrors, tables, books, a bike, the list goes on - I taught her to walk past the local market just before they are cleared away, she gets quite a lot of fruit and veg that has been dumped by the stall holders, perfectly good for soups/stews, fruit puddings etc. David and Greta would be proud of her

A few years ago now a group of new houses were built at the end of our road. Housing company contracted by the council to build them.

It was awful for the five of us houses living along the road for the 18 month build, road was all dug up, power cuts as they frequently cut through cables by accident, lorries blocking the road, mud everywhere, very rude builders, blocking our driveways etc so we couldn’t get out and very slow progress.

Eventually I think they overran and got threatened with non payment or something by the council, as suddenly the workmen on site doubled and lots of stuff happened very quickly as they were working to a new deadline.

We noticed the builders were so rushed at the end that they were just throwing perfectly good building materials in their skips to get the site cleared (such an appalling waste of money! ) along with any broken and damaged stuff.

We looked in the skips one night when walking past and saw a lot of brand new bricks, in perfect condition, that had been dumped in there along with building rubbish. They, were near enough the colour of our patio that we had never been able to finish as we had run out of money the previous year.

Under cover of darkness that night, DH climbed in and out of lots of their skips and did many trips up and down the road with his wheelbarrow and a torch and a couple of weeks later our patio was finished off!

I am sure that our other neighbours did similar as there was so much good stuff thrown by the builders, timber, plaster board, tiles etc. and the skips used to look emptier every morning! It was just appalling how much they threw, but at least everything that was removed was put to use and didn’t end in landfill.

I had a skip out the front once when I was having a clear out and I couldn't believe the amount of people who came by to have a root around. I was a bit embarrassed because it was all my rubbish!