I have to admit I like to dumpster dive, and Walmart has supplied me b way of their large hopper dumpster with a ton of varous trees, plants and odds and ends this year, to the point it looks like I have a commercisal garden center myself. Most plants only need a little tender care and decent waterings and conditions, and the majority of them grew and bloomed just fine.
Last week I picked up 66 5 gal buckets with a 40 pound bad of fertilized potting soil in each bucket, marketed by Miracle Grow, out of the Walmart Dumpster. All new and unopened. Today I made three, yess three trips in my pickup truck and loaded it to the max each trip with bags of various potting soils in 40 to 50 pound bags, and also bag after bag of pine bark and also Cypress shredded mulch, as well as 4, 50 pound bags of Rye grass seed, and some assorted other smaller packages of various grass seeds...centipede, Fescue etc, in 5 and 10 pound packs. All of this was just thrown in the dumpster.
I coould have made maybe two more trips, but my back was about give out. There was still still quite a few bags of mulches, and soil, and who knows what else under all of that stuff. Its mainly stuff thats dumped from the garden center, not regular garbage. They also throw store displays and racks etc in this dumpster, which have turned into great metal racks for holding lots of potted plants.
-- Visit my website: Remove nospam for correct address http:// snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com Contents: foundry and general metal working and lots of related projects. Regards Roy aka Chipmaker // Foxeye Opinions are strictly those of my wife....I have had no input whatsoever. Remove nospam from email address
You may also be a thief!! Do you have permission to dumpster dive in a dumpster on Wal-Mart's private property? That dumpster may contain merchandise going to a recycling center, or it may contain stolen goods, and you may be an accomplice, not knowing it. You could do jail time if you don't have permission and are caught.
My home is on private property and the state laws here state that anything I have set out on the street for the garbage man is fair game. Check where you live, it may be the same there.
or it may contain stolen goods, and
This is true.
You could do jail time if you don't
I don't believe you need permission to go through a garbage dumpster.
In 1988 the US Supreme Court ruled that trash-picking is legal. But there are centuries-old precident laws going back even to Jolly Old England that establish as a veritable "right" for scavengers to obtain & keep or sell anything they find in the trash. A very few cities have nevertheless put restrictions on dumpster diving & local laws should be checked at the library (does no good to ask the police who won't know, won't look it up, but might say it's illegal rather than admit they don't know & don't care if its legal or not).
Exceptions are when dumpsters are locked, are inside gates, or posted no trespassing, or when special municiple restrictions on recycle bins as distinct from dumpsters of mixed refuse. By & large when it's in the trash, it's fair game, whether you're the cops going through the trash looking for evidence without a search warrant (don't need one), a crazy nosy neighbor reading then posting on the web someone's discarded correspondence (no legal right to privacy if it is thrown in the trash), a hungry homeless guy looking for pizza rinds, a craftsperson looking for junk to weld together into "art", a junk dealer looking for salable freebies, a major recycling company contracting with the city or county but NOT with whoever threw out the garbage, or a dumpster diving hobbyist.
The illegal part would be depositing your own trash in someone else's dumpster; circumventing a lock; or leaving a mess. When trash is on the curb or alley, there is not even a trespassing issue, but on business tarmacks or parking lots the issue of trespassing can become clouded, though if legal access is generally permitted for customers, so too it is for dumpster divers. Garbage left on a property that does not permit general access is illegal to take -- that worn out couch on the curb is legal to take, but the when it was still sitting on the front lawn getting rained on & moldy, it was still the homeowner's personal possession. There are also "intellectual property" issues; if I throw out a manuscript for an original short story & you find it, it's yours, but you can't publish it; or if you find a computer harddrive, it's yours, but the software on it might not be legally transferable; & so on.
Most dumpster diving is behind retail shops. The restriction (with exceptions) is usually a lock, not a law. No lock, no prohibition. Dumpster diving has become so common, though, that more cities feel the need to regulate diving, as sometimes guys with big trucks drive through alleys getting recyclables & whatnot, & sometimes bums leave nuisance calling-cards like all the black plastic bags ripped open & scattered about a parking lot. A few states are more concerned with taxing the microbusinesses of dumpster divers who scrounge & sell enough stuff to make a living without being detected by the taxing authorities.
Habitual dumpster divers sometimes keep photocopies of articles on the Supreme Court ruling to give to irate shopowners who threaten to call the cops on dumpster divers. Politely informing them of the law, as long as it's not rudely expressed, & your reassurance that you'll be following the law & leaving no mess, usually shuts them up. If the owner doesn't care if it's legal or not but just wants you to go the hell away, they will have to post a no-trespassing sign or put a lock on their dumpster. As many do. Otherwise, if it's in the trash, you can have it.
Of course, some businesses put stuff out back beside the dumpster with the EXPECTATION that it will be hauled away by dumpster divers, & they're glad of it, it keeps them from having to pay for a bigger dumpster.
Dumpster diving activists:
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seriously bad side-effect of dumpster diving is the great many businesses that throw out credit card information. Last year Congress once again failed to pass a law requiring businesses to discard c.c. information safely by returning it to a bank or shredding it; Visa & Mastercard persistently lobbies against such laws. The majority of illegally used c.c. numbers are obtained by dumpster diving. Yet people worry about emailing such information, which is still the minority source of stolen numbers (and even hackers rely on info found in dumpsters, dumpsters being a good place to find passwords). If your personal stats are in the trash, they can be legally taken by anyone who finds them, but their use of them might be illegal. See here:
I don't know where you're located, but your WallyWorld manager needs lessons in community relations and economics. That (wo)man is missing a golden opportunity if those gardening products aren't being donated to local garden clubs for community projects. In our area any broken bags or left over seasonal gardening items are donated to garden clubs, who are responsible for maintaining public projects. Not only do these items give the people involved in receiving this products a good feeling about WalMart but also make them logical consumers of WalMart products. In addition, the items donated are listed by the recipients and provide a tax write off. This is a win - win situation for WalMart and the community.
Once it hits the curb, it's fair game. Problem for this fellow though is that he is going on private property to get to the dumpster -- that's trespassing. All things depending, that could land him in a world of hurt.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net says... :) Once it hits the curb, it's fair game. Problem for this fellow though is :) that he is going on private property to get to the dumpster -- :) I think it depends on the city. We have plastic tubs we set at the curb to separate recycle stuff from what's going to the landfill and there is suppose to be a law keeping people from driving around getting to anything on the curb that has a value for recycle before the trash people get it.
I suspect that they dump it for the tax break or whatever sort of 'gains/loss' break they can get. Bean counter stuff.
Funny about the garbage, where I live once its on the curb, its city property so they get really upset if others go thru it, however if the dogs etc spread it around, suddenly its YOUR property again.
I have been removing things out of Wally Worlds dumpster and have the security guard drive right by and wave at me. There is no law in this town or state concerning dumpsters, as long as you do not climb over fences or unlock areas to get to it. As far as private property is concerned, yes it private but open to the public. Unless a sign is posted warning you not to remove items from dumpster it perfectly fine.
-- Visit my website: Remove nospam for correct address http:// snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com Contents: foundry and general metal working and lots of related projects. Regards Roy aka Chipmaker // Foxeye Opinions are strictly those of my wife....I have had no input whatsoever. Remove nospam from email address
I bought 80 bags of mushroom compost and 80 large bales of peat moss from Wal Mart @ $1.00 ea. This was at the store on the other side of town, on the way home I drove by the WM near me and they were still selling at the regular price, go figure.
pick-up. Most streets and roads have right-of-way that is from a few feet to several feet wide on each side of the paved or gravel roadway. That is far different from a container on private property. If you are caught in a dumpster in the city I live in, they haul you to jail and ask questions later. I've hauled a lot of loot out of dumpsters, but I got permission from the owners of the stuff going into the dumpsters before I dove in.
That's not what I've been reading in my stockholder reports, annually. If this was a practice, is isn't now or hasn't been since I owned the stock. I've owned the stock for about 10 years.
Does the report tell you the vision centers are leased, or that some electronic centers are leased? Did your report ever tell you the pharmacy was leased? I ask, because all were at one time, and the vision center near me is still leased. I never owned Wal-Mart stock - nor Home Depot. A couple of dumb non-moves on my part!! ;-(
Broken bags of garden products are not meant to be eaten by either an animals or a humans. Donating them to worthy projects rather than destroying them makes sense to me.
When someone gives you a paperback without a cover, it may be an illegal book. Bookstores tear off the covers which they return to the publisher for credit. In doing so they are promising that the book was destroyed. The local Loews returns the nursery?s tag on unsalable plants and throws out the plants. A friend say an area at Lowes with sick plants and asked if they would sell her a sick tree for a reduced price. They said, no we have to throw them out, but if you want we will throw it into your car. With a bit of TLC the tree survived.
Speaking of dumpster diving, my wife welds sculpture and does a lot of diving for scrap metal. In one of those big industrial sized dumpster, she will not come up for air for minutes. I suspect there may be liability problems if someone is hurt in a dumpster, but so far no one has chased her away. Dave
We'd all probably be in hog heaven in Japanese metropolises, where living space is tight, rent sky-high and the moderately well-to-do allegedly just throw out a lot of almost new stuff when they want to redecorate. Makes sense in a way: if you only have space for one table and four chairs, something's got to go. zemedelec
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