I heard the phrase ‘Dumpster diving’ many times, but until this morning I thought it was an exaggeration. It’s not.
As I walked toward my car this morning, I saw a man looking into my building’s Dumpster. My first reaction was ‘no, he can’t be picking through the trash.’ I then realized he wasn’t alone – there was a man actually IN the Dumpster opening up bags and picking though the contents. He handed a water bottle to his friend, who was standing in front of the Dumpster holding a trash bag containing soda cans.
My desk
I think it’s important to go green and am always looking for ways to do so. I am that obnoxious friend who yells when people throw paper in the wastebasket or discard a can in a trash barrel on the street, because a recycling bin isn’t near. The floor of my car, my trunk and even my desk are known to have a slew of cans. ( When I realized our recycling box had been thrown away at work – probably because of the never ending gathering of fruit flies – I was distraught and began criticizing my coworkers who threw their cans away, instead of bringing them home. Needless to say, that began the pileup of cans on my desk). Anyways, my point is that I always encourage people to recycle cans, it’s good for the environment and you get money back.
I always see a few people around town collecting cans in a shopping carriage, but I never realized the extent to which people go to get the nickles. In the news, we are constantly being told the economy is doing better. Gas prices dropped and although they are not as cheap as most would like, they are much better off than they were in summer 2008, for example. But I implore you to consider the homeless, job-less, average people who look the same as you and I but go INTO Dumpsters to add up those nickles. There must be more we can do to help them.
And we certainly can recycle our own cans.
When I was in the military soldiers on post would drive up to the company dumpsters every Sunday and Monday night to dumpster dive before the garbage pickup and after the weekend of parties in the barracks.
They made some pretty good money doing it, enough to make their monthly payments on expensive pickup trucks used to collect the recyclables, and after a while many of us started trying to put the bottles and cans on the side of the dumpster to make it easier on them.
I can see why they would do it, the money and it is good for the environment, but I will never understand the “freegans” that dumpster dive for food. Well, not the freegans that aren’t poor or homeless and dumpster dive for food, at least?
Comment by connecticutman1 — February 23rd, 2010 @ 5:48 pm