{"id":11659,"date":"2010-03-07T23:45:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T05:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/?p=11659"},"modified":"2010-03-07T23:56:15","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T05:56:15","slug":"dumpster-diving-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/2010\/03\/07\/dumpster-diving-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumpster diving adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, my daughters (aged 9 and 11) convinced me to go dumpster diving out in the alley behind our house in the City of St. Louis.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve gone dumpster diving a few times over the years.\u00a0 Based on the prior expeditions, my daughters fully expect that if they look through a few dozen dumpsters, they&#8217;ll find something valuable.\u00a0 You see, this is America, where people through away perfectly usable toys and games, as well as furniture, appliances and clothing.\u00a0\u00a0 And even when you don&#8217;t find usable merchandise, you&#8217;ll see literally tons of single-use paper and plastic being thrown out.\u00a0 When you see the incredible piles of discarded usable things with your own eyes, it is all-the-more astounding.  Even more surprising, if you&#8217;re looking the highest ratio of usable stuff, look in the dumpsters behind apartment-dwellers rather than the dumpsters behind expensive single-family homes. <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it sounds disgusting to go dumpster diving.\u00a0 If so, get over it, because it can be far more than an anthropological field trip&#8211;it can be like winning a mini-lottery.\u00a0 My kids and I have found several extremely nice coats, for instance (we washed them and gave them away to friends).\u00a0 We once found a working DVD player.\u00a0We&#8217;ve taken home shelves and other items of furniture. We&#8217;ve found dozens of toys, which merely need to be cleaned up to become usable.\u00a0 As I&#8217;m finding these sorts of things, I keep thinking &#8220;Why wouldn&#8217;t someone take the time to donate this to Good Will of Salvation Army?&#8221;\u00a0 When people throw a valuable thing into the landfill, it&#8217;s gone forever&#8211;what were they thinking?<a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/yard-waste.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-11664\" title=\"yard-waste\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/yard-waste-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"yard-waste\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what we found on our recent expedition.\u00a0\u00a0 First of all, I must digress.\u00a0 The City of St. Louis provides special separate dumpsters for Yard Waste Only and other dumpsters for general rubbish.\u00a0 On our recent\u00a0 expedition, I looked into 20 of of those yard-waste-only dumpsters.\u00a0 About <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">half <\/span>of them contained non-yard waste.\u00a0\u00a0 This astounds me too.\u00a0 Why would someone screw up this incredibly sensible system for recycling vegetation by throwing plastic, food and paper into a yard waste dumpster?<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s a typical example of what you often find in a yard-waste-only dumpster:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11660\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11660\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11660\" title=\"non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11660\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, people throw away massive amounts of single-use paper and plastic.\u00a0 Probably the biggest single category is cardboard pizza boxes.\u00a0 In our one-hour expedition, I probably saw 500 used pizza boxes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11662\" title=\"pizza-boxes\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"pizza-boxes\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a>But we also saw huge amounts of clearly recyclable goods that were not being recycled.\u00a0 Hundreds of glass jars, metal cans and plastics and immense amounts of paper, all of it headed for the landfill.  We also saw hundreds of pounds of colorfully-inked food packaging.  All of it carefully designed to catch your eye at the store, and then you toss it into the landfill.  But, it&#8217;s not like you really toss it in&#8211;instead, a huge fleet of city trucks carts this packaging far away from the city in order to dump it into the landfill.   It makes me wonder how many toxic chemicals were released into the environment in order to produce all of this food packaging.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11663\" title=\"recycle-material\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"recycle-material\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a>We found several toys and many items of clothing that had been saturated in pasta sauce, meat grease or who-knows what kind of fluid.\u00a0 We decided to keep looking.\u00a0 What my girls ended up taking home for a quick clean-up was a little toy dog that they found inside of a woman&#8217;s big purse.\u00a0 You&#8217;ll see his photo below.\u00a0 My girls named him &#8220;Oscar&#8221; (after Sesame Street&#8217;s Oscar), and he now lives with us .<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11661\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11661\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11661\" title=\"oscar\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg\" alt=\"Oscar\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg 640w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11661\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oscar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, my daughters (aged 9 and 11) convinced me to go dumpster diving out in the alley behind our house in the City of St. Louis.  We&#8217;ve gone dumpster diving a few times over the years.  Based on the prior expeditions, my daughters fully expect that if they look through a few dozen dumpsters, they&#8217;ll find something valuable.  You see, this is America, where people through away perfectly usable toys and games, as well as furniture, appliances and clothing.   And even when you don&#8217;t find usable merchandise, you&#8217;ll see literally tons of single-use paper and plastic being thrown out.  When you see the incredible piles of discarded usable things with your own eyes, it is all-the-more astounding.  Even more surprising, if you&#8217;re looking the highest ratio of usable stuff, look in the dumpsters behind apartment-dwellers rather than the dumpsters behind expensive single-family homes. <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it sounds disgusting to go dumpster diving.  If so, get over it, because it can be far more than an anthropological field trip&#8211;it can be like winning a mini-lottery.  My kids and I have found several extremely nice coats, for instance (we washed them and gave them away to friends).  We once found a working DVD player. We&#8217;ve taken home shelves and other items of furniture. We&#8217;ve found dozens of toys, which merely need to be cleaned up to become usable.  As I&#8217;m finding these sorts of things, I keep thinking &#8220;Why wouldn&#8217;t someone take the time to donate this to Good Will of Salvation Army?&#8221;  When people throw a valuable thing into the landfill, it&#8217;s gone forever&#8211;what were they thinking?<a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/yard-waste.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-11664\" title=\"yard-waste\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/yard-waste-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"yard-waste\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what we found on our recent expedition.   First of all, I must digress.  The City of St. Louis provides special separate dumpsters for Yard Waste Only and other dumpsters for general rubbish.  On our recent  expedition, I looked into 20 of of those yard-waste-only dumpsters.  About <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">half <\/span>of them contained non-yard waste.   This astounds me too.  Why would someone screw up this incredibly sensible system for recycling vegetation by throwing plastic, food and paper into a yard waste dumpster?<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s a typical example of what you often find in a yard-waste-only dumpster:<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_11660\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\" caption=\"Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11660\" title=\"non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Contents found in a yard-waste only dumpster\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/non-yard-waste-in-yw-dumpster.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>[\/caption]\n<p>As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, people throw away massive amounts of single-use paper and plastic.  Probably the biggest single category is cardboard pizza boxes.  In our one-hour expedition, I probably saw 500 used pizza boxes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11662\" title=\"pizza-boxes\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"pizza-boxes\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/pizza-boxes.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>But we also saw huge amounts of clearly recyclable goods that were not being recycled.  Hundreds of glass jars, metal cans and plastics and immense amounts of paper, all of it headed for the landfill.  We also saw hundreds of pounds of colorfully-inked food packaging.  All of it carefully designed to catch your eye at the store, and then you toss it into the landfill.  But, it&#8217;s not like you really toss it in&#8211;instead, a huge fleet of city trucks carts this packaging far away from the city in order to dump it into the landfill.   It makes me wonder how many toxic chemicals were released into the environment in order to produce all of this food packaging.  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11663\" title=\"recycle-material\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"recycle-material\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/recycle-material.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>We found several toys and many items of clothing that had been saturated in pasta sauce, meat grease or who-knows what kind of fluid.  We decided to keep looking.  What my girls ended up taking home for a quick clean-up was a little toy dog that they found inside of a woman&#8217;s big purse.  You&#8217;ll see his photo below.  My girls named him &#8220;Oscar&#8221; (after Sesame Street&#8217;s Oscar), and he now lives with us .<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_11661\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"450\" caption=\"Oscar\"]<a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11661\" title=\"oscar\" src=\"http:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg\" alt=\"Oscar\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar.jpg 640w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/oscar-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a>[\/caption]\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5160],"tags":[5636,2064,1296,5637],"class_list":["post-11659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-sustainable-living","tag-dumpster-diving","tag-garbage","tag-trash","tag-yard-waste","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dangerousintersection.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}