My Dad. RIP 1995. Did this for most of his adult life. He was born in 1921 and grew up poor. It wasn’t called recycling then. He did not dumpster dive but being in Chicago with a neighborhood of vast alleyways he walked them and found all kinds of neat stuff. He especially liked finding good books.
Good friend of mine who is in his late 40’s lived outside of Chicago in a rich neighborhood and told stories about cruising the neighborhoods on trash day. People would throw out nearly new weed trimmers and such because they didn’t know to re-string. They’d take them, fix what was ever wrong with them and sell.
So do I.