Dumpster diving

Categories: Cleanup from August 2005 | Cryptographic attacks | Waste | Hobbies

Dumpster diving, also called "dumpstering," or "trashing," is the practice of rummaging through trash, whether commercial or residential, to find useful free items that have been discarded.

The term originates from the fanciful image of someone leaping into large rubbish bins, called "dumpsters," or "skips," but the practice is actually more like fishing around than diving in.

Food can often be acquired in this manner from bakeries or grocery stores. Offices, factories, department stores, and other commercial or retail establishments also sometimes throw out nonperishable items that were returned or have minor damages.

Brief outline

Supermarkets routinely discard food items even before the expiration date simply because of overstock, or because of minor imperfections or blemishes. Quite often this food is perfectly safe for consumption, although care must be taken to wash all produce. (See Food safety.) Garbage bags often contain a layer of deodorant and discarded food can therefore become toxic.

Dumpstering can be something someone does on the spur of the moment if they see a useful item being thrown away, a conscious lifestyle choice as a part of freeganism, or a skill acquired by those who may not have many other options to obtain needed goods or food. Dumpstering is also associated with "curbing", or rummaging through trash on city sidewalk curbs. Discarded furniture, electronics, appliances, lamps, books, and clothing are all commonly found.

Italy's situation is vastly different from that of the United States. Food is rarely thrown away unless it is rotten, and restaurants, supermarkets and any other source of food which is close to its expiration date is collected by thousands of charities and redistributed to poor families or cooked for the homeless, etc. It is common to see people diving into garbage looking for antiques, or people collecting wood or metal to recycle. With a growing number of towns having started door-to-door collections, the number of publicly accessible bins has decreased, although a few bins remain along main streets as receptacles for tiny items such as chewing gum, cigarette butts, cans, etc.

British television shows have even featured home renovations and decoration using salvaged materials. Changing Rooms is one such show, broadcast on BBC One. Recovery of still-useful items from discards is well-known in other cultures as well; James Fallows noted it in his book written about his time living in Japan.

The academic field of garbology has used dumpster diving to examine the sociology and archeology of trash in modern life. There is a major outpost of academic garbology at the University of Arizona, directed for some decades by William Rathje.

Information diving

In addition to offering useful items like food and clothing, dumpsters can also be a source of information. Files, letters, memos, photographs, IDs, passwords, credit cards and more can be found in dumpsters. Many people never consider that sensitive items they throw in the trash may be recovered. Of course, using information obtained in a dumpster is probably illegal in most cases. (See identity theft.)

Supposedly, information diving was common in the 1980s due to lax security; when businesses became aware of the need for increased security in the early 1990s, sensitive documents were shredded before being placed in dumpsters. In any case, there is still considerable Internet activity on the subject of dumpster diving, so it is unlikely to have stopped with the widespread introduction of document shredding. Security mythology has it that curious hackers or malicious crackers commonly use this technique, but this may be an urban legend as social engineering is often easier.

Dumpster diving is commonly practiced by "watchdog" organizations seeking information on groups they are investigating. Trinity Foundation successfully used this technique to report on the activities of televangelist Robert Tilton, and has also obtained information on Benny Hinn using this practice.

In the 1960s Jerry Schneider recovered several instruction manuals from The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, and used the information to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of telephone equipment.

The Castle Infinity game, after its shutdown, was brought back from the dead by rescuing their servers from trash.

Legal status

Because dumpsters are usually located on private property, dumpster diving is illegal in some parts of the United States, though in many places the relevant laws do not seem to be very vigorously enforced. The California v. Greenwood Supreme Court case in the U.S. have held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. Dumpster diving is legal when not mentioned at state or town statutes.

Police (and possibly other) searches of dumpsters and like discards are not violations; evidence seized in this way has been permitted in many criminal trials. The doctrine is less well established in regard to civil litigation. Similarly in the UK, though dumpster diving is, in theory, theft, there is very little enforcement in practice.

Private investigators have written books on "PI technique" in which dumpster diving, or its moral equivalent "wastebasket recovery," figure prominently. In Italy, a law issued at the beginning of the new century declared dumpster diving perfectly legal.

Further Reading

• Art and Science of Dumpster Diving by John Hoffman; ISBN 1559500883
• Travels with Lizbeth by Lars Eighner (contains a chapter on the topic); ISBN 0449909433
• Dumpster Diving: The Advanced Course by John Hoffman (brings dumpster diving into the computer era) Paladin Press 2002; ISBN 158160369X
• The Simple Life, Berkeley Press (contains a chapter by Hoffman on dumpster diving)
• Steal This Book!, by Abbie Hoffman (speaks briefly on dumpster diving in the Free Food chapter)
• Evasion, Crimethinc Far East, available at www.crimethinc.com

External links

• The Dumpster Diving Forum
• Dumpster Diving forums and gallery.
• SeattleDIY SeattleDIY's detailed dumpster diving page.
• Jargon File definition
• The Dumpster Lady's FAQ
• Skip Diving in the Yahoo Hobbies directory
• See also the Usenet newsgroup, alt.dumpsterde:Containern

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