No.19
Anyone done any dumpster diving?
I've only done it a few times, with a couple more experienced people. There was a group of grocery stores we would scope out. Sometimes there would be a bunch of stuff back there, plenty of great vegetables, enough for several boxes to be filled. Some places also throw away cakes and things. We once had an industrial size freezer full of discarded, high quality ice cream that lasted for months.
Anyway, something I learned from this is (1) use a headlamp, headlamps are great and (2) grab up some wax cardboard boxes from these places too, because wax cardboard is great to have when you're making a fire.
No.20
As far as cleaning the food goes…You can really just use your judgement. Some foods might get rot on them. If it's not the whole thing, then just cut off the rotten part later when you're processing the food. Take a small taste or whiff of things. You'll get the idea whether or not it's safe to eat. I never got sick from doing this. We tended the avoid stuff that had touched eggs/meat. When the food was brought home we washed it, and during that time is when we cut off the rotten or mealy parts, then set it aside to dry off. Then it was ready to cook with.
No.23
They put fucking locks on all the dumpsters around here, it's impossible to get into them now.
No.24
>>23Also, even getting those 5 gallon plastic buckets, which are what I really wanted to get recently is hard to do now.
No.25
>>23Ugh, that sucks. I found a page about unlocking dumpsters if you're interested in that:
http://trashwiki.org/en/Unlocking_dumpsters>>24Good luck. love a good 5gal bucket
No.54
when i was unemployed i dumpster dived for scrap metal this is what i learned
>apartment buildings=loads of scrap metal
>behind a small liqour store you can find tons of damaged goods i got like 5 gallons of cheap wine
>everywhere else: fucking nothing
No.55
>>54>everywhere else: fucking nothingWat
Out of curiosity, Where were you diving at? I never tried apartments or liquor stores but i hit up grocery stores quite a bit and got good veggies. I was doing this in suburban and semirural california.
No.56
>>55suburby southeast wisconsin, with stores its always impossible to get in
No.57
Keep an eye out for electronics recycling bins, I've gotten so many video game consoles and spare PC parts from them
No.116
Oh yeah, I have done my share of dumpster diving. I used to live in a town that had a packaging place for those pre-made sandwiches you see in convenience stores and some vending machines. I used to raid their dumpsters every Friday night and grab as many ham, turkey, bolognia, Cuban, and corned beef sandwiches as I could carry. As well as the occasional bag of chips, bottle or can of soda, or snack cakes.
That was pretty much my such of groceries for like…a year and a half of unemployment. Got monotonous fast and couldn't have been healthy, but whatever. I will note, I have never once gotten food poisoning from anything I've eaten out of a dumpster. In contrast, got three cases of it from fast food places during my lifetime.
No.148
>>116It's because stores throw out old stuff like a day before the expiration date. Expiration dates themselves are usually like a couple of days before it gets bad. Depending on what food you're talking about, here. I know milk can last at least 3 days after the expiration.
No.149
Downtown movie theaters with lots of outside trash cans = popcorn snacks everyday. Pic related came from a weekday afternoon. Obvs weekend nights yield much better results.
Target stores are also a source for popcorn but not as reliable.
No.151
>>149>Digging out food that's been sitting in the openThat's just gross, man. You can't even wash off popcorn.
No.152
>>151Eh doesnt bother me…i just pour out the half of the popcorn on top. Who shoves their hand all the way down in there?
One time i didnt pour it and ate some cigarette ash though…that was nasty
No.153
>>152It's not that peoples hands have been touching it. It's that trash tends to attract all sort of gross insects and shit.
No.156
No.157
I go to some apartments every weekend, using a bike and trailer. The laptop i'm using came from there.
The last big score was a bunch of gamecube games.
No.162
I've done it a few times. It's really best to get to know a specific area really well and get to know the schedules of the businesses. It's great to pick over a bakery's dumpster right after they close.
There's a book called Mongo: Adventures in Trash all about recovering discarded stuff. I recommend it.
There's also CrimethInc's books which get into it a bit too
No.164
>>157man i really want to try apartments soon…
though i guess the end of the month is best for that
wasn't even diving one time and found a huge beautiful undamaged mirror by an apartment complex dumpster. could have sold it for some decent money i bet.
No.261
I love diving. Honestly I'm more interested in it for the sake of rescuing food that would otherwise be thrown out since I can afford food myself, but it's a lot of fun in general.
I usually go for grocery store dumpsters because I rarely find anything good otherwise in the city (worth reselling or reusing, that is).
Basically you just need to go around to every possible place and scout it out. Compactors? Fuck me. Locks? Don't fuck with it.
Start making your rounds and you'll get enough food to feed yourself constantly.
/r/dumpsterdiving is a decent resource for discussion (yeah yeah, fuck reddit etc).
Right now is prime diving season for me since it's 30-40 degrees all day and meat and cheeses don't go bad.
No.262
I got this tv this morning in some apartment dumpster, just had to program a remote to it. Fuck spending money
No.263
>>25Another method to getting around unlocking dumpsters is to try and befriend janitors. There are some that really would like to see the stuff they throw out reused. One Janitor I knew, must have given thousands of dollars in stuff that was being thrown out that I fixed, and either sold or kept. Too bad he moved.
Also on other thing you can do is you can walk around on Garbage day and see what you find. I found one of those $200-300 computer desks once just taking a walk.
No.269
No.270
>>156Bitch…. you are nasty
No.271
I've never understood diving for food in this day and age. Most stores these days don't dump all the food and give the good stuff to churches/local pantries, at least here anyways. It could be different wherever you are, but there are tons around here.
My mom and I go to a few every week and get lots of good produce, breads, dips (like guacamole, hummus, etc) and stuff like that. I'd look into them if I were you. It's a great way to get free food without having to stoop to getting government food money.
No.272
>>271Had one around my place too. Mom used to go there and get like cakes and fried chicken a day over the expiration date. I don't know what it was called because I never went myself, but we ended up getting a ton of cakes for some reason. I guess Mom had a sweet tooth.
No.273
>>272Oh yeah, those places always try to load you down with the sweets. It was pretty cool at first, but after a while it became sickening and we end up giving that kind of stuff away.
No.308
>>149You can get god damned gallons of soda as well; half the shit bought at movie theaters is never eaten.
No.310
No.454
So I'm going to start diving because I want to get more free for free, but everywhere seems to be locked when I scout it out.
My idea is to buy a padlock (maybe for $20 or something), cut off the existing one, replace it, as well as leaving one of the keys it comes with in the lock for the store to use while I use the other one.
Would I make back my investment through anything I find, and would this actually work?
No.455
>>454I have no idea but I wanna see what happens
also, some grocery stores dont throw it all in the dumpster, some leave pallets outside in the open to get picked up
No.456
>>23I superglue the locks of anyone who locks their dumpsters. Fuck them.
No.498
>>454buy a pick or a bump key or something bro.
No.515
>>456How do you superglue it? Into the keyhole or what?
No.516
>>498You don't even have to buy a pick, they are pretty easy to make.
No.523
freegan.info
No.524
whoever can find a way to turn trash into treasure is going to be rich in the future. I see all kinds of stuff thrown out which could have some kind of recycled use. I remember growing up I read that 11% of fresh lumber is discarded in the construction process. And I've seen the dumpsters of houses being built and it's filled with useful raw materials.
Trash to treasure man
No.544
i've been dumpster diving my food since 1979. now i dive for food not bombs and we do a free meal downtown every saturday.
No.557
>>262>Westinghouse tvNo wonder it was thrown out. Those are a piece of shit. Great that you found it for free, though.
No.576
>>454He smiled until he aheroed, god save pinochet the communist slayer.
No.629
There's a scrap dealer not far away from me, I regulary buy or get free pc stuff to fuck around with, brought a Intel E8400 CPU for my parents their desktop and it runs fine at 3.6 GHz on air.
Not a bad buy for 4 euros I would say!
No.630
I trash pick and dumpster dive.
I've gotten:
-Tasty Kakes
-A flat screen that could be easily fixed by replacing one capacitor
-A gaming chair (the shit tier one you can buy at walmart)
-Bass amp
-Guitar bag
No.631
>>19>that pic I hope you guys aren't diving for unpackaged food
No.632
>>631Actually I used to go to a dumpster like that one, full of fruits and veggies. Sometimes they'd throw meat in it too, so then we'd have to skip that one, but with no meat, we would take whatever veggies we wanted.
The thing is that when you get the stuff home you just clean it off. Wash it, scrub dirt off, then cut off mold chunks, cut off any mysterious grime…Smell it to make sure it's not rotten (though by that point you could tell cause rotten shit is mushy and discolored…also it makes a slight crackling sound)…And then prioritize eating the food by order of how soon it would go bad. The bad stuff we just gave to pigs and chickens but not everyone has those.
From OP pic the only thing I wouldn't bother with would be all that loose lettuce. The heads are OK though, unless they're wilted.
No.645
Rode my bike to a cafetaria, and found out that Panasonic's BeNeLux's HQ is closing/moving, should I nag the people there and ask if I could scrounge around in pic related? (not sure how they cal it in English)
Maybe I'll find a junk Toughbook or something there O.O
No.646
As for trash picking:
45 washers over 7 years (mostly from people's driveways or Marktplaats, Netherlands' their version of Craigslist)
Loads of computer stuff, but I mostly dissasemble those and keep the parts.
Sometimes I dissasemble a washer on location partially just to take a part, for example:
In 2010, I had a Miele W423 (German built, and it's a tank) washer from the early 70's with a blown water inlet valve, I remembered that a local thrift store had a W423 and that it's engine has gone boom, so I asked them for that valve and they just said this:
"It's in the scrap metal dumpster, you can have the inlet valves free if you can remove them."
Took them out, thanked the owner of the store, went home, put it in my own 423, and it works fine again!
Later I scrapped the machine for reasons I don't remember.
Also, I wish that fucking "Verwijderingsbijdrage" (disposal fee of old white and brown goods here in NL) wasn't invented in 1999, otherwise I would have had about 70 or more washers in that 8 years! (that people would put their machines on the curbside or driveway instead of that the electronics chain takes them back)
No.671
>>646What the fuck are "white and brown goods"?
No.685
If anyone has a gamestop around them that's been the most successful for me the past couple of years.
I've got
>3 PS2s
>2 Gamecubes
>1 Gameboy advance
And a lot of games/strategy guides/accessories. Also Verizon Wireless can be good sometimes, as I've gotten otterboxes, chargers, and a few phones (flip)
No.686
>>671White goods = washing machines and whatnot
Brown goods = TVs, radios and everything between
No.692
I haven't been diving for a few months, did get a few nice bikes while taking out trash though.
>>557Yeah I was told it was a lower quality tv. Still is working fine though, no dead pixels or discolored spots.
The only thing I noticed is that it gets blurry from all the bloom in AAA games.
No.697
older tvs can be tuned to pick up cell phones and do not have spy shit built in. turn your dial
No.704
this is fucking disgusting
No.709
I don't know if you guys have these in the US but here in Aus, there are TAFEs which are a technical school that kids can drop out of high school and go study trades.
I have noticed that the bins at these tech schools are full of untouched packed lunches that parents make for their kids that the kids throw away because they bought food from the cafeteria instead. If you're dumpster driving for food, this could be a good place to look because the food is shrink wrapped and fresh.
As far as electronics and scrap metal goes, I would look at universities. I furnished my first room with stuff that my local uni threw away. Tables, chairs, computer, screens, etc.
No.726
>>704
So is your pansy ass
No.728
>>271
>Most stores these days don't dump all the food and give the good stuff to churches/local pantries, at least here anyways.
(I know this is an old post.)
Where I used to work didn't. The dumpsters were locked though. One time it wasn't and this woman who bought stuff everyday was caught going through it.
I used to sneak stuff out when I had to do the waste alone. A lot of it was off, terrible or broken but when there was good stuff like pre-made sandwiches going out of date, why not?
Generally though there aren't many good places to dive here.
>>709
>universities
I can get to one of those. I just need to figure out where they dump their waste.
No.877
>>19
The reason why we lock our dumpsters and don't give unused food to local food drives, etc, is because if someone gets sick, we could be civilly sued or potentially held criminally responsible for whatever ailment befalls them.
I'd love to give out food that's past due but still edible, but in our capitalist society, it's got to be disposed of.
>>456
Quit being a nigger and realize that we have to do this due to store policy/law, depending on the jurisdiction. Ultimately the price of the lock will be subsidized through higher product prices.
No.910
>>877
Where are you located? In the US there's the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.
No.915
No.920
>>915
>Canada is a shit
What a surprise.
No.921
>>920
In the US, most grocery stores can't give away "expired" food either, at least not on the west coast. Some do donate the food if it is about to go bad, but not when it's reached the sell by date.
No.974
>>23
pick them
tutorials are on YT
if you arent in a rush you can get really far with a rake (might take 1min or so)
tools would cost 10-20$