Dumpster Diving Tips (original) (raw)

June 9th, 2009

holypigeon	03:45 pm - Dumpster Diving TipsDoes anybody have any good weblinks about dumpster diving or any personal experiences/tips to share? I'm going to be blogging about my experiences with dumpster diving and want to supplement it with additional resources.

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	From:jaime88 Date:June 10th, 2009 03:20 am (UTC) (Link)

Jamba, the Diety associated with dumpsters has many lessons to teach us. Among them, that plenty and treasures abound, and that not everything in the dumpster is for you to eat.

I spent much time in the past dumpster diving in Chicago, when I was told that a town of 25,000 produces enough waste food to feed another 25,000. Apparently that was considered a sort of tipping point. Smaller than that doesn't work so well, and larger provides even more.

These days many stores have locked dumpsters, which sucks, but why go there. On to the next dumpster.

Dunkin' Donuts throws out way more dough and donuts than you really even want to know. Skip that dumpster all together.

It can be helpful to have a stick with a hook on it. Also if diving at night a flashlight. Tho' I never had either, these were just suggestions other folks made.

My acquaintance, Tiner, felt that recycling cardboard was the way to go. He had a long list of all the many benefits to mankind and the environment provided by recycling cardboard. He would load up a flat bed with cardboard from dumpsters, drive it to the recycler, and usually made just enough for gas. Nobody I knew thought Tiner was actually sane. Not actually dangerous, but, you know...

It can be helpful, if you make a big score, to know where the homeless shelter is, since they are usually very happy to accept food donations.

If you time it right you can come across something that has just gone out of date, dairy products, for instance. Once I found 15 pounds of butter. At that time I was big into making my own curries fresh. Me and my friends were all butter-babies for a week.

Another time I found 14 100# bags of potatoes. Each one with 3 or 4 bad potatoes in it. I took them all over to MaxWorks, around 2 in the morning, my Nova saggin' low beneath the weight. We spent a couple hours separating the good from the bad, and washing the good ones. Everyone had plenty of taters that Winter.

Praise Be Unto Jamba!

Edited at 2009-06-10 03:22 am (UTC)

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	From:aisa0 Date:June 10th, 2009 12:40 pm (UTC) (Link)

I was going to poke my head in here and praise Jamba myself, Jamba being a much better guide to dumpster diving than the internets.

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	From:jaime88 Date:June 10th, 2009 02:53 pm (UTC) (Link)

Whoa! Are there dumpsters on the internets?

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	From:holypigeon Date:June 10th, 2009 04:08 pm (UTC) (Link)

Indeed! There's a lot of trash on the internets that needs sifting through!
Thanks for your comment; I will make a note of staying away from dunkin' donuts. I'm looking more for mongo than for food, but I won't pass up a good food find.

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	From:jaime88 Date:June 10th, 2009 04:59 pm (UTC) (Link)

Mongo? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo

Jamba provides many things.

I used to have a set of speakers - found some decent drivers w/o boxes in a dumpster, and put them - flaunting anything I ever learned about wave and sound theory - in cardboard boxes, also from a dumpster - they worked well enough.

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	From:iamburgundy Date:June 10th, 2009 05:56 am (UTC) (Link)

I don't have anything personally, but I think this site might have some books that would be helpful.

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	From:syrinx Date:June 11th, 2009 09:19 pm (UTC) (Link)

Salon.com had a good article about it not too long ago:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/03/30/scavengers_manifesto/index.html

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	From:syrinx Date:June 11th, 2009 09:20 pm (UTC) (Link)

P.S. Please share your post here after you write it!

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	From:holypigeon Date:June 12th, 2009 04:05 pm (UTC) (Link)

Thanks fo the link. Will do.

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	From:verbenamo Date:June 12th, 2009 12:22 am (UTC) (Link)

I used to dumpster dive all the time! Long's Drugs would throw out everything that couldn't be sold anymore- not that expired, but those products whose sell by date passed -- delicious for another couple weeks! Cookies, candy, beef jerky, all still factory sealed! Most of those dumpsters have locks, but only on the outide, so if you can hop a 5-6 foot wall, you're good to go.

Okay- if you go during business hours, many local employees recognize which cars are there normally and will call the cops or security if they see different cars (possessive of their refuse?). So I'd park in front and walk back. If you go at night, cops roll around the backs and look for funny stuff, so I'd always go in daylight. Plus, if there's nasty stuff (we found Polaroids of some guy's penis with some horrible STD that were questionably wet!) you can avoid it better in daylight.

Good luck and good hunting!

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