Would you go "dumpster diving" just to save a few bucks?

I would; the freegan lifestyle interests me :3

I saw a programme on skip diving in the UK and how this woman does it searching for food, and she’s quite wealthy too, I don’t see why people would do that to save money specially when stores do their own branded food at quite low costs, compared to the popular brands that is, like onemandog said I would do it if it came down to survival.

It depends on what is in the dumpster. the more liquidy it is, the less likely i am to jump in. any dead bodies, rule it out too. but who knows the treasure a dumpster could hold. is it any worse than scuba diving? heck, people pee in water all the time and then you go immerse yourself in it.

Agreed

Most likely not, that seems very unsanitary and just plain awkward. If I can’t afford it I’ll go without it.

I have done a bit of dumpster diving. We have the green can sites around the area and have picked up TV’s, Monitors and other electronics that need a small repair to them or where just a bit older but still work fine. Picked up a whole box (like 30+) CD-Rom drives one day.

My friend goes to the green can’s more often than me to dump his trash and has come back with all shorts of cool things. Came back with a TRUCK full of monitors once. A local company switched to all flat screen’s and where throwing out the old CRT monitors. Got a very nice bin for nuts and bolts that was VERY dirty - but the hose fixed that. Brand new batteries for his cordless drill- drill they where with was just shot. And all shorts of other stuff.

Its getting hard to find nice things tho because people drive around to the green can sites and strip all the copper out of everything to sell. (good condition copper recycling rate is like $6+ a pound last time I checked). So cords are cut off all the electronics, monitors and tv’s are gutted, tubing taken of the back of fridges. I know people sort through the green cans for other metals too like tin & aluminum cans. Or things that they can fix up and sell.

Ive had to search through a garbage can once for my concert tickets at a rest stop through all the bags and contents and trash. It wasnt all that bad. I guess for an actual dumpster It would depend on the situation. Lookin for food? Nope. Hiding from he cops, yeah. Survival, yeah. Dare, depends on who dared me. Fun? No. Lost my sweater, no. Juust depends I guess.

For that reason, I probably wouldn’t unless thats ALL that ever got thrown away in there. Even then… eww O.O

if the bin belongs to a 5 star restaurant and the food being dumped was fresh and only just being dump why not. even bring my own table and sit it up outside near and have my own fine dining with friends

Okay, I could see myself doing something like that.

Oh gosh…. you just made me never want to go scuba diving O.O

It depends how affluent the dumpster is. I would not go digging inside a getto dumpster or a dumpster in a trailer park or some whorehouse in Nevada but I bet the dumpster where the rich people live or for major retail stores distribution centers may hold things of value. I once dumpster dived and got a computer! It was from like the late 90’s and the hard drive was gone but I was able to install a new hard drive in it and got it to run Windows XP.

One persons junk can be another persons treasure. I’d rather have someone willing to do the work and dumpster dive then breaking into my home, or working on a con game in order to steal.

In my town, most of the stores give their no-more-sale products that are close to expiration date to the homeless shelters, in the evening. So there’s no point in diving for food.

But there are returnable bottles in Germany. You get money back at the store for bringing the bottles in for recycling or for cleaning and re-use. Some people still throw them into the landscape. Or in the trash. It’s between 8 and 25 cents per bottle, depending on the type of bottle. I’d collect bottles or dumpster-dive for bottles to make some extra cash. A lot of people do.