dumpster diving

[fflo]

Well, we didn't actually dive into any of the dumpsters---they were heaped too high for that. But yesterday squirrelykat and I did some serious reuse reclaiming recon in the trash from the departing U. Mich. crowd, apparently some of whom are just as well off and wasteful as we imagine. Her big find: a Prada purse. Mine? Hmmm... I like my new towels & shelves, and I'm glad to have the free cleaning supplies, but the top scores are (1) the deco repro clock (I like me some clocks), (2) the two very nice wooden coat hangers (two of this hanger, in fact:



), and (3) the nearly-full 3-lb can of Maxwell House. My bean grinder bit the dust recently, so it's not even disappointing that my free coffee is already ground.

The roller blades and snowboarding shoes weren't my size. And I already have a Swiffer---a shame, cuz there were plenty of those to be had.

Comments

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

I miss being able to outfit myself with the effluvia of spoiled rich kids. Dumpster diving is a waste of time around here. People are just not doing their share to keep Murka up to its wasteful standard.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

All the plastic hangers & other plastic stuff were particularly upsetting to me, going straight into landfills. You can imagine how lazy they were about recyclables, too---even in a town with some of the easiest curbside pickup of that stuff you can find.

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

That does my head in. We have limited, but curbside recycling. There's only one other house on this street that regularly recycles.

p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

thanks for reminding me of "effluvia"

Re: p.s.

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

Maybe that should be "affluvia".

Re: p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

HAW!

[groovesinorbit]

Free stuff. Always good.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I'm just today getting rid of my first stuff via freecycle.

hmm....

[squirrelykat.livejournal.com]

spoiled rotten rich college kids. the vase I got was nice, the
plastic storage units are way helpful. i liked the flasks, too!

i was so torn afterwards - happy about our scores, and the scores
for the homeless guys, and the perpetual garage sale guy with the
pickup truck, but the disgust for those kids turned my stomach.
the excess, the lack of thought of their disposal system - throwing
away recyclable stuff, stuff that shouldn't be in a landfill, like
you said. and all those clothes - even if I can't wear them, they
will get a good home. What tiny girl wouldn't want abercrombie,
forever 21, and polo clothes!?!

Re: hmm....

[chubbycore.livejournal.com]

I miss dumpster diving after college move out, and like you, seeing what these kids throw out just made me angry. I already have class isues, and seeing what was garbage to them makes it worse.

a friend of mine used to do clean outs in a college neighborhood. he routinely cleaned out apartments where it looked as if someone got out of bed and just left. these kids would just abandon everything. he told me that each of his kids has their own television, they have like 3 or 4 game console thingies, and like 3 COMPUTERS. Last I talked to him, even his extended family had so much salvaged stuff that it was running out of their ears.

i'm totally jealous, because I often secretly (or not so secretly) wish i could be that spoiled and privileged.

Re: hmm....

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Great picture for this one! Yeah, that's the thing about class privilege & human nature... it's easy enough to see why people don't want to give it up.

[madush69.livejournal.com]

Great finds! I'd be leary about what those kids may have done to an already opened can of coffee though. They could have messed it up, or let it get stale or something.

[squirrelykat.livejournal.com]

ah, we thought the same thing - they (the people at the house)
said the coffee was fine, from the weekend graduation party (and
elderly grandpa type comfirmed it as ok!)

i got 3 cans of alpo for a friends dog!

[madush69.livejournal.com]

MMmm, Alpo is good. (from what my canine friends have told me)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I doubt seriously that anybody would "mess up" something just to throw it out---particularly anything stealthy that I couldn't pick up by opening the can & looking at and smelling the coffee. And it's the evidence of my senses I'm going with here, not the word of the guy by the trash. Stale, no big deal. Too stale, I'd toss it, and it would belong in the garbage---but at least I'd recycle the big metal can.

There's a lot of usable food in the trash; I'm fortunate not to have to depend on it regularly myself, but much is wasted. sprig5 gave me a book once that was a memoir of sorts by a guy who'd lived on the streets. Useful & surprising info about edible items in the trash.

Part of why I want to be less squeamish about such things is a growing association I have of that squeamishness with what I think of as the deluded American cultural sense of the "safe" as the homogenized, McDonald's-franchise-predictable-"known", properly contained in layers of guaranteeing "tamper-proof" packaging---counting on some kind of corporate/governmental/legal sanctioning as "pure" and within the "expiration" date more than we count on our own ways of determining what's safe, and buying the idea that boogeymen are out there trying to poison us. To go along with that kind of thing unthinkingly is to participate in and further part of the capitalist/marketing agenda that is happy to divide us from each other & keep us scared and locked away in our separate houses with our individual lawn mowers and laundry machines, getting our world view and our folklore, such as it is, from our TVs, and telling us our own ways of knowing what is safe to eat, for instance, aren't to be trusted. Know what I mean?