I had an uncle that was a driller on big oil rigs. He was very unassuming. On his days off he (and me) would go up to the local dumps and scavenge for metal and anything else we might find useful. (Lots of hard hats and boots from oil workers that lasted a week, got paid and left!)
I thought he must have been pretty hard up.
As we were putting stuff away in his huge garage with all of the shelves and boxes he said he was waiting for copper to get to x amount of dollars, and aluminum to y, etc. Then he said how he divided it up into about 50 pounds a box.
I tried to make a quick inventory of the 100’s of boxes he had stored. I guessed he had $40k worth of metal.
And then when the other workers told me how much he made as a top driller I was amazed. But - he liked to do it, and he made some money too. He really liked exploring for the old dumps from the various ghost towns where he would do it just like gold mining (which he did too).
Wade along in the creeks looking for old garbage, and then follow it up to the “mother lode” of the old garbage dump! He had all sorts of old bottles, buttons, etc.
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.