Dumpster diving, what to do with stale bread, how to not pay for trash pickup
I'm pretty new to dumpster diving, and I'd been really busy, and not had the chance to go out since it was nice and sunny out. That is, until yesterday. (I would like to point out that trash placed in public dumpsters or on the curb for pickup is public property. It actually went to the supreme court, because police wanted to know when the could legally collect evidence from people's garbage for criminal investigations. The court ruled that anything placed in a public dumpster or on the curb for pickup was legally public property and anyone who wanted it could pick it up.)
Edit:
Because so many people are complaining that dumpster diving is illegal, I went searching around one of the links provided by one of these people, and came across this page listed by the USDA, (a government organization.) I would like to quote: Stealing trash is not illegal. The Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that once an item is left for trash pickup, there is no expectation of privacy or continued ownership. You can find this quote about halfway through the article, under the section titled Dumpster Diving. I find it indicative that of all the links against dumpster diving that have been provided, there has been ONE government link, and that link didn't work. The government is perhaps the most authoritive source of information on laws passed by the government. When I insisted that dumpster diving was, indeed, legal in spite of their complaints, 00goddess began attacking me personally.
I've been driving a friend on her paper route and when we finished in the wee hours of the morning, we had a few hours to kill before a doctor's appointment, so we went looking around for some cool stuff we could use. We hit paydirt behind the GNC. Turns out they throw away a ton of sealed herbs, supplements, and nutritional bars that are past their expiration date. We filled about two large apple boxes with medicine, highly nutritious food, and herbal supplements. Since most pills are good YEARS past their expiration date, we have a really decent supply of very expensive medications that will come in really handy for a long time. Those nutrition bars will definately help make my diet much more complete. Whatever we cannot use, I plan to sell on ebay to supplement my $200/month income, and whatever won't sell I'm gonna give away to whomever will take it.
I wanted to share this with all of you, in hopes that it inspires others to take advantage of others' trash. Some of my best finds have been from:
1. The trash bin behind the Goodwill. Most of the thrift stores send whatever items they don't want on to another thrift store, and in my area, the Goodwill is the end of the line, so they have a large dumpster filled with lots of stuff. There are pleanty of generic stuffed toys, and all sorts of stuff.
2. Pier 1 Imports has a policy of "destroying" all of their merchandise before they throw it away. Often it's only superficial dammage, or can be repaired with simple sewing skills. I've gotten furniture and many decorative items from their trash.
3. Bookstores rip the covers off books and return only the covers to the manufacturers. The books are still readable.
4. Furniture stores frequently throw away merchandise with minor scuffs, or stuff that is in perfect condition, but has been taken home and cannot be resold as new.
5. Grocery stores throw away pleanty of food that is expired, but still perfectly edible, ie day old donuts, eggs, milk, and canned goods. (Milk should be good for 14 days after the sell-by date, eggs are often good for months past the time they "expire," and canned food is good almost indefinately, as long as it isn't dented or opened. Bakery goods are edible for as long as they are not moldy.)
Speaking of yucky tasting bread, there are a lot of useful things that can be done with bread that is not so soft & moist. Bread that is slightly stale can be covered in gravy, and you won't be able to tell. Slightly harder bread can be broken into chunks and reformed with a couple of eggs into a loaf shape, then cooked in the oven. What results is a new loaf of bread-like substance that is much more tasty. For bread that far exceeds anything edible on the hardness scale, there's still hope in the form of stuffing. My grandma's stuffing recipe actually CALLS FOR dry stale bread. Some people will cut the moldy parts off of a loaf of bread and eat the rest, but I am loathe to do so, as when I was taking biology, they told me that the visable mold part was only about 5% of the total mold colony, that 95% was underneath the surface (and in the bread itself.)
Speaking of things you have to throw away, you can save a lot of money in most places by not producing any trash, and therefore not having to pay for garbage pickup. Almost anything is recyclable if you know where to try to recycle it. For instance, many grocery stores have bins where you can recycle used grocery bags. What a lot of people don't know is you can recycle anything that's soft plastic there as well, as long as it doesn't have any foil on it (like some chip containers do.) We used to fill grocery bags with plastic trash and take them into the supermarket whenever we went to buy groceries. Paper trash is recyclable at many office buildings, and since the offices get paid for the paper they recycle, many of them will take in your paper trash, as long as you are careful with sorting. The easy things, like aluminum cans, tin cans, glass, and plastics with the numbers on the bottom can be set out at the curb in a recycling bin. Organic trash can be composted, or fed to a pet rat (which I think is the most useful garbage disposal.) Larger items (broken washing machines, dressers, machinery, etc.) can almost always be reused by someone. You'd be surprised what someone will pick up off craigslist or the local classifieds when listed as "free to good home." When I was living alone in eco-conscious California, I managed to produce one small grocery-sized bag of trash every one to three months (mostly feminine products,) which was easily dropped off at a gas station, or combined with my neighbor's trash. I've never paid for garbage services. Now if you manage to reduce your trash to near-nothing and call the waste pickup and ask to not pay for services, they're probably gonna not want to do it, but they are legally required to not charge you for a service that you do not use. I've had good luck by telling them that I recycle heavily and haul the remainder of the stuff to the dump. Nomatter what, they're not gonna believe that you produce NO trash, even though it's physically possible, and at times I've done it.
Edit:
Because so many people are complaining that dumpster diving is illegal, I went searching around one of the links provided by one of these people, and came across this page listed by the USDA, (a government organization.) I would like to quote: Stealing trash is not illegal. The Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that once an item is left for trash pickup, there is no expectation of privacy or continued ownership. You can find this quote about halfway through the article, under the section titled Dumpster Diving. I find it indicative that of all the links against dumpster diving that have been provided, there has been ONE government link, and that link didn't work. The government is perhaps the most authoritive source of information on laws passed by the government. When I insisted that dumpster diving was, indeed, legal in spite of their complaints, 00goddess began attacking me personally.
I've been driving a friend on her paper route and when we finished in the wee hours of the morning, we had a few hours to kill before a doctor's appointment, so we went looking around for some cool stuff we could use. We hit paydirt behind the GNC. Turns out they throw away a ton of sealed herbs, supplements, and nutritional bars that are past their expiration date. We filled about two large apple boxes with medicine, highly nutritious food, and herbal supplements. Since most pills are good YEARS past their expiration date, we have a really decent supply of very expensive medications that will come in really handy for a long time. Those nutrition bars will definately help make my diet much more complete. Whatever we cannot use, I plan to sell on ebay to supplement my $200/month income, and whatever won't sell I'm gonna give away to whomever will take it.
I wanted to share this with all of you, in hopes that it inspires others to take advantage of others' trash. Some of my best finds have been from:
1. The trash bin behind the Goodwill. Most of the thrift stores send whatever items they don't want on to another thrift store, and in my area, the Goodwill is the end of the line, so they have a large dumpster filled with lots of stuff. There are pleanty of generic stuffed toys, and all sorts of stuff.
2. Pier 1 Imports has a policy of "destroying" all of their merchandise before they throw it away. Often it's only superficial dammage, or can be repaired with simple sewing skills. I've gotten furniture and many decorative items from their trash.
3. Bookstores rip the covers off books and return only the covers to the manufacturers. The books are still readable.
4. Furniture stores frequently throw away merchandise with minor scuffs, or stuff that is in perfect condition, but has been taken home and cannot be resold as new.
5. Grocery stores throw away pleanty of food that is expired, but still perfectly edible, ie day old donuts, eggs, milk, and canned goods. (Milk should be good for 14 days after the sell-by date, eggs are often good for months past the time they "expire," and canned food is good almost indefinately, as long as it isn't dented or opened. Bakery goods are edible for as long as they are not moldy.)
Speaking of yucky tasting bread, there are a lot of useful things that can be done with bread that is not so soft & moist. Bread that is slightly stale can be covered in gravy, and you won't be able to tell. Slightly harder bread can be broken into chunks and reformed with a couple of eggs into a loaf shape, then cooked in the oven. What results is a new loaf of bread-like substance that is much more tasty. For bread that far exceeds anything edible on the hardness scale, there's still hope in the form of stuffing. My grandma's stuffing recipe actually CALLS FOR dry stale bread. Some people will cut the moldy parts off of a loaf of bread and eat the rest, but I am loathe to do so, as when I was taking biology, they told me that the visable mold part was only about 5% of the total mold colony, that 95% was underneath the surface (and in the bread itself.)
Speaking of things you have to throw away, you can save a lot of money in most places by not producing any trash, and therefore not having to pay for garbage pickup. Almost anything is recyclable if you know where to try to recycle it. For instance, many grocery stores have bins where you can recycle used grocery bags. What a lot of people don't know is you can recycle anything that's soft plastic there as well, as long as it doesn't have any foil on it (like some chip containers do.) We used to fill grocery bags with plastic trash and take them into the supermarket whenever we went to buy groceries. Paper trash is recyclable at many office buildings, and since the offices get paid for the paper they recycle, many of them will take in your paper trash, as long as you are careful with sorting. The easy things, like aluminum cans, tin cans, glass, and plastics with the numbers on the bottom can be set out at the curb in a recycling bin. Organic trash can be composted, or fed to a pet rat (which I think is the most useful garbage disposal.) Larger items (broken washing machines, dressers, machinery, etc.) can almost always be reused by someone. You'd be surprised what someone will pick up off craigslist or the local classifieds when listed as "free to good home." When I was living alone in eco-conscious California, I managed to produce one small grocery-sized bag of trash every one to three months (mostly feminine products,) which was easily dropped off at a gas station, or combined with my neighbor's trash. I've never paid for garbage services. Now if you manage to reduce your trash to near-nothing and call the waste pickup and ask to not pay for services, they're probably gonna not want to do it, but they are legally required to not charge you for a service that you do not use. I've had good luck by telling them that I recycle heavily and haul the remainder of the stuff to the dump. Nomatter what, they're not gonna believe that you produce NO trash, even though it's physically possible, and at times I've done it.