Posted on 12/10/2022 3:52:29 PM PST by nickcarraway
People have hunted for discarded goods in dumpsters and trash cans for decades. But in the last few years, it's developed a massive following on TikTok, with dozens of people chronicling their dumpster diving excursions, proudly posting their hauls, and raising awareness about the excessive, unnecessary waste from some businesses.
The yield for these dives seems especially bountiful around holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, where stores have specific seasonal stock they can't sell after the fact.
In the last week, creators have uploaded dozens of new videos of dives and hauls under the hashtag "#DumpsterDiving," which has amassed nearly three billion views on the platform.
Tiffany She'ree, a popular dumpster diving influencer with over 2.7 million followers under the handle "dumpsterdivingmama," posted a TikTok on Thursday showing her claiming a massive heap of Christmas-themed soaps outside a World Market store. Earlier in the week, she went through a Party City dumpster and found a smattering of Thanksgiving goodies: a turkey gobbler costume, an apple orchard welcome sign, hay bales, wine bags, pumpkin decor, and tea lights. A few weeks after Halloween, she found a myriad of costumes and a giant pillar of decorative skulls.
The range of items that TikTok dumpster divers have found is stunning, and some hunters have even hauled home expensive products like LEGO Star Wars kits, Apple AirPods, and Gucci ties. One forager said she discovered over $1,600 in items from a Spirit Halloween dumpster.
Some of the biggest dumpster diving influencers are very explicit about their mission to curb waste and raise awareness about the misuse of leftover, unsold store items.
Salty Stella, a TikToker with over 1.2 million followers, shared a video last week of how upset she was after discovering piles of food—KIND snack bars, soups, juice, sodas—in one dumpster.
"You wanna see some shit?" she said at the start of the video. "Look at all the ramen I'm collecting. You wanna tell me ramen goes bad?"
Anna Sacks, a TikToker from New York City with over 400,000 followers, is known as "The Trashwalker." She frequently shares videos of the binned goods she's found. Her hauls run the gamut from designer ties and puffy North Face coats to a potty training kit and medical insulin supplies.
In her videos, Sacks frequently draws attention to wasteful city tendencies and proposes alternatives like donating or recycling instead of discarding items. Her Twitter bio describes her effort as trying to "divert as much as possible from landfill/incineration, create systemic change & raise consciousness." She has called for "donate not dump legislation" for hygiene products that could be used to help people in shelters.
"Corporations don't want people to see the overproduction, the wastefulness, the lack of donation," Sacks told The New York Times in an interview in November. "To change behavior, it's important to expose the wastefulness."
You’re right. My daughter sent me pictures of the dumpster at her college campus apartment when school let out last summer. Stacks of furniture and rugs. The amount of nice furniture was shocking.
My mom preferred to call it early American curbside shopping.
Whenever it was bulk trash night, she would load us up in the station wagon and head over to the uber-rich side of town. We found lots of great toys, bikes, wooden furniture, etc.
She and my father were depression-era babies. Nothing good went to waste.
Not surprisingly, they had the money to help my one brother start his business, put four of us through private college, and my sister and I both went to private high schools, as well. Their medical care at the end of their lives was quite expensive, but all five of us still walked away with a six-figure inheritance each.
My sister and I are extremely frugal to this day. Freecycle, consignment shops, pawn shops, antique stores, if we can get it cheaper...why not?
I won’t dive into a dumpster, but I am not above stopping at a curbside heap if I see something interesting.
One man’s trash...
Their medical care at the end of their lives was quite expensive, but all five of us still walked away with a six-figure inheritance each.
We’re any of you able to care for them in your homes?
They always find old or rare coins at venues like Coinstar because a lot of those are from burglaries/theft of coin collections.
“Supermarkets dump expired stuff that is still good”
I don’t know why they don’t make them free the day before or right before closing.
Seems like it would generate some good will.
It’s because no one would buy anything and they’d wait until the giveaway hour. Then there would be a mob of people trampling and beating on each other to get in on the free stuff.
I used to live across the alley from a near-campus apartment complex. Students would dump EVERYTHING at the end of spring semester. I still have a few kitchen items from those dumpsters. There was a guy who lived not far away who used to dumpster-dive the whole neighborhood and have yard sales every so often; I think it was a significant part of his income.
Depends on where you live but it is a possibility.
Didn’t think about that.
Live in the DC suburbs. Different kind of scum out here.
Yeah, you got the super dangerous scum.
I lived in a town that had a lot of retired people.
When they died their relatives would vome and clean out the house.
Anything they couldnt use went to the dumpster.
I used t get brand new tires, TVs, microwaves, clothing
I had a relative who was a garbageman for a time. He knew who drank (and what), whose husband just died (all his golf, fishing, etc. gear was out), etc.
My kids had all the latest yard toys - he would take them back to the shop, steam clean them, and voila.
There are several folks who ride around on trash day - one goes for metal, another for housewares, etc. We even have a guy that rides around picking up Christmas trees after the holiday - mulches them.
This story is re-written every time we are in the beginning of a recession. I’ve seen the same article written time and time again throughout the past few decades. “Hey, go dumpster diving! You find some great deals! That’s the way to save money! You will be one of the cool kids if you grab stuff from the trash”.
That’s not to say that our society does not discard way too much perfectly good stuff. I have a couple of wooden shelves that I grabbed from the landfill. The items could have been given to Good Will, or been advertised as a “free, just come and get it” item. Instead, someone just tossed them into the landfill. What a waste!
However, stories such as this are presented as original, when they are just rewrites from a few years ago. Just like the stories about how to save money by cooking several meals as once and freezing them. What an epiphany! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?
“I lived in a town that had a lot of retired people.
When they died their relatives would vome and clean out the house.
Anything they couldnt use went to the dumpster.
I used t get brand new tires, TVs, microwaves, clothing”
___
A lot of high-dollar collectible Corelle ware and Pyrex dishes are thrown out when that happens. Also, people toss old flower vases, not realizing their value. It’s amazing what you can find at yard sales in high dollar neighborhoods. They just put all of grandma and grandpa’s belongings on the lawn and practically pay people to haul it off. They do not realize that Grandpa’s old hand tools are collectibles and will bring in a decent amount of money.
Never, and I mean never, take used furniture from college dorms. Especially mattresses.
What do you do with the money in your spare change bucket? I went through mine today and sorted and counted all the coins into baggies. I hate to pay the CoinStar fee and the bank won’t accept loose coins (they want them rolled which is a huge pain to do manually). My wife thinks it’s rude to take $20 in quarters to pay for breakfast or lunch at the local cafe.
Junior year there were a bunch of guys living on my hall that spilled the Copenhagen spit cup or bong on the couch almost every day.
Went through the penny jar and took out all the pre-81 copper.
I keep nickels & quarters in separate containers - nickel for the metal and quarters are fungible. The rest goes in the Coinstar at the bank - no charge!
Thanks for two great ideas! I never thought about dumping it into the self-checkout machine at Walmart.
I didn’t know that the Coinstar machines at the bank don’t charge a fee, either. I’m not sure about my local Wells Fargo Bank branch, though. I went in there last summer and they wouldn’t accept the loose change and told me I needed to put it in rolls. I tried doing that for a few minutes, but I was horrible at it.
Do you have to be a customer to use a Coinstar machine at a bank?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.