Jesus was a vain bastard, painted a self-portrait. Not like Mohammed who was a bit camera shy.

...is another man's trash?

I used to go hunting for scrap metal...but the competition has gotten pretty tough lately. Used to find old pieces of office machinery and stuff and often there was sizable quantities of aluminum in a lot of it. Found an old backyard swimming pool wall that was made of aluminum in a field one time, and got about $60 USD for it...that was a while ago...it'd be more than that now...maybe double.
Business and industrial districts are a pretty good place to hunt for stuff if you can find dumpsters that don't have locks on them, and it's specifically not private property.

I couldn't believe the first time I walked around my campus and saw all the stuff they throw away. If you ever wanted a couch, a desk, lawn furniture or tons of other big items, college students throw away a lot of stuff.

I don't really think Dumpster Divng is wrong or gross or anything like that, but things like this just give me bad feelings. I mean how do you know that the chair didn't have body parts stuffed in it, and the tear was there for inserting and removing limbs, or it could be coated with the seman of someone who suffers from every STI ever.

It's unlikely, but you just don't know this [censored].

I'd be very wary of any kind of padded fabric furniture...bedbugs have become a very real problem in many areas.

[censored], last time I went dumpser diving was for food. I used to eat some damn good meals out the back of restaurants.

Goofing off as teenagers, a couple of us once threw a friend into a dumpster. It backfired on us though, he was our ride and when we threw him in his car keys fell out of his pocket. We had to climb in to help him look for them.

they are in perfect condition

my neighbor made it

It was an office chair, no room for body parts, leather not fabric, and it seemed pretty clean to me.

I needed a new chair. That's, what, $60 I still have that I wouldn't if I hadn't taken it, maybe more. And my cousin spent $30 getting the chain fixed on that bike that probably cost at least $200.

Are you that weary around yard sales as well?

I've never been dumpster diving but my step-father owns some apartments and rents out a few homes. The things that people will just leave in these places... A paintball gun, a computer, a desk, a fishtank, a live turtle...

this whole thread reminds me of a short story I had to read last year, I think it was called "On Dumpster Diving" and it told the story of a man who was homeless for a certain part of his life.

he described how he subsisted on dumpster diving, and would go to various dumpsters throughout the city for certain things. At night he'd hang out by a dumpster he knew a local pizzeria dumped its un-used food into. He'd go to a dumpster outside a local college at the end of a semester since a lot of college students apparently throw out a lot of perfectly usable things. He was also very proud of his, apparently mostly new, pair of Jordan Tennis shoes he found once. He also stumbled upon a working hand-held radio which he'd listen to on occasion.

yet the whole moral of the story was how he explained that in the end, all of this came from trash and dumpsters, and no matter how great those Jordans were, that radio was, or that un-eaten pizza tasted, someone decided it was trash, and thus was publicly deprived of its value. They were things that ultimately were meaningless and that everything we own and eventually throw out is meaningless, and he admitted that once the batteries died on that radio he just threw it out.

Your dump sounds a lot cooler than my dump.

My father also owns homes in which he rents out. Most of them are on farms that he purchased in order to get to utilize the land and the farms so he just rents out the houses. When ever someone moved out it was always extremely interesting seeing the countless items they left behind. There were times when the house was left almost completely furnished. I can't even begin to list all the useful and valuable items we found. Crazy stuff.

Never purposefully gone looking for stuff, but on holiday I've picked up some perfectly good swimming inflatables and a diving mask that another holidaymaker had thrown in the bin because there wasn't room in their suitcase to take them home. Washed them off in case there was anything on them, then they were as good as the ones the shop was selling.

When my dad was at the dump before taking some of our old furniture to... well, dump, he swapped some of it with a man who was dumping loads of motorbike magazines and some gardening tools. Swapping was better than all that lot just going to landfill.

I don't know if I should write "how practical" or "how sad."

Motorbike magazines and gardening tools? Your Dad got the better end of the deal...easily.

I thought only druggies and homeless people went dumpster diving... :-/

A playstation one and 46 games
A pogo stick
A painting of the HMS victory (my favorite warship)

Yeah, many dumps I know of it's actually illegal to scavenge.

I have never gone dumpster diving, but I was told pretty much the first day of my freshman year in college, that in my major, I will have to at some point for a class.

I don't think I will enjoy that part, but I am also sort of indifferent to it.

I've always wanted to do this. I'm not a cheap bastard, I just don't like paying for things unless they're absolutely necessary.

A PS1 in working condition? And 46 games?! That's pretty cool. I have some great memories with the good 'ole PS1. I had a Sega Genesis which we played like crazy so it was a real step up when we got that Playstation for Christmas.

However I don't know about that pogo stick. It's probably rigged to snap after a certain amount of bounces. Lol


Really? That's strange seeing as how it's all considered garbage and it's items others have already discarded anyway. I guess I could see how they wouldn't want a bunch of people always rooting around in their big dumpsters. Still a lame law though.

Because if someone gets hurt on a certain object, or eats a certain food, and they get injured or sick, then they can turn around and sue the trash company/entity who threw out said garbage, and win. At least in the U.S.A.... (America is already the most sue-happy country in the world, and the law for taking trash from receptacles or the dump proves that.)

That is absolutely correct.

[edit] The last statement absolutely. I think the waste management companies cover themselves pretty well though....after thinking about it for a few minutes here.