4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2006
DUMPSTER
(CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Amanda Sellers/KANSAN
Tyler Davis, 24, of Lawrence, sifts through music and books thrown away in a dumper. He tries to dumpster dive late at night after stores have closed and thrown out their trash. He usually finds items that have little damage and are in good condition so he is able to reuse them.
He hopped inside and began searching, holding items up to the dim light of his cell phone and inspecting them. Davis used to use a flashlight, but said the light made him much more noticeable to passers-by. Standing inside the dumpster, he was invisible to anyone who drove through the neighboring parking lot.
Tyler Davis, 24, of Lawrence, looks at an herbal supplement he found on a dumpster dive. He said he gave away most of what he found to friends.
Davis examined several books, checking copyright dates to see if they could be re-sold. Last year when students moved out for the summer, he found six or seven books that he sold for $300. Lots of valuable items are dumped by students at the end of the school year, he said.
"Aha!" Davis exclaimed when he thought he found a keeper: an American government textbook. But a second look told him it was outdated. Usually this dumpster was full, Davis said. But that night, items barely lined the bottom of the bin. Disappointed, Davis drove on to his next stop. He grabbed a cardboard box from inside the overflowing dumpster and started loading it with bags of hotdog and hamburger buns and packages of bell peppers. Davis said most of the items were edible.
"I've bought worse than that," he said, holding up a package of expired hotdog buns.
In two hours, Davis made seven stops within a two-mile radius. In the end, he took away nearly a dozen jugs of fruit punch, bell peppers, bread, magazines for his friends, and more than half a dozen books. Davis said this was typical of the time he spent making a night of dumpster diving.
At the last stop of the night, Davis rummaged through a heap of white trash bags, opening each one and peering in or sniffing its contents.
"Eww, gross!" he said when he opened a soggy bag of rotting seafood. Its fishy odor wafted through the night air. He tossed the bag
Amanda Sellers/KANSAN
back onto the pile, and carefully opened a sack beside the trash bin. Amid orange peels and other food scraps, Davis found loose leaf bok choy, a type of cabbage that the business had tossed
businesses would get a compactor or fence off their dumpsters. He said some people relied on the dumpsters for a source of food.
Of all the items he collected that night, Davis said the bok choy was all that he would keep and use. The rest he would give to friends. He has reached a point where he has too much stuff, and his live-in girlfriend
"I'm a firm believer that whatever you need, somebody else already used it and threw it away."
TYLER DAVIS Lawrence resident
Davis asked that the specific names of businesses he visited not be used in the story for fear that
because it was too limp to sell. He grabbed a fistful out and then carefully re-tied the bag, leaving it as he had found it.
Davis said it was important to respect business establishments. He said that people left messes behind at the Goodwill store and that the store had erected a fence barrier and installed a compactor.
gets upset. Their apartment is furnished with many items that Davis found in the trash, including a computer monitor, two laptops, a set of bookshelves complete with stacks of books, DVD players and much more.
Davis, like
other dumpster divers, said he dove to save money and because he didn't like wastefulness.
He said he didn't look for food often in Lawrence because he knew there were other people who depended on it. He has, however, been dumpster diving for food in other towns.
Like Davis, Brummett said he went dumpster diving whenever he needed something, like furniture.
"I'm a firm believer that whatever you need, someone else already used it and threw it away." Davis said.
Joel Brummett, 19, has been rummaging through trash since he was little. He said dumpsters were an untapped resource for free stuff.
"I had some gnarly tacos in Austin," Brummet said. "Sometimes meat can be a little shady, but bread is always easy to come by."
Others search the garbage in Lawrence for a thrill.
Emily Magee, 2003 alumna, said she and her friends found several computers that a lab on campus had thrown out one summer. They took the machines home, tested out their parts on her computer, then pieced together the working parts. Magee said the computer they built worked, but very slowly. She kept it for about a year as a "trophy."
Some dumpster divers are motivated by ideological beliefs, like Graham Kenady, 19, who gets food from the trash as a way of protesting wastefulness. Kenady is a Freegan, someone who forages goods rather than purchasing them as much as possible, to minimize waste. He said he scavenged on a daily basis, and got about half of his food and other items from the garbage. The best recent find was a set of golf clubs that he pawned for $20.
Bob Yos, Lawrence Solid Waste Division manager, said his crews that collected the garbage had seen all kinds of things go to waste, including charcoal grills, boxes of ammunition, stereos and ladders.
They even found a human skeleton once that police determined came from the house of a retired professor.
The Jefferson County landfill, where waste from Lawrence is taken, is off-limits to scavengers and a Lawrence ordinance makes it unlawful for someone to confiscate contents of waste receptacles or materials placed out for recycling. Yoos, however, said he had never seen anyone get in trouble for rummaging through trash.
"I guess he decided to clean the skeleton out of his closet," Yoos quipped. "The crew that saw it was very startled."
Several local businesses even accommodate dumpster divers by placing leftovers outside in a clean garbage bag, although many of their regulars are hungry people who need the food, not recreational scavengers like Davis.
A manager at Rudy's Pizzeria said he set four or five leftover pizzas outside at the end of the night in boxes for people to take. He said most of the people who came for them were regulars who were respectful of the trash area and kept the space around it clean. Some of them even show up early to help take out the trash or
clean up, he said.
But for scavengers who don't act out of necessity, dumpster diving is a way to recycle useful products and recover abandoned treasures.
Despite the bugs, the used diapers, the stench of rotting food and the potential embarrassment of being seen waist-deep in trash, dumpster divers who don't act out of necessity consider their nighttime activity as a way to recycle, save money, discover abandoned treasures or simply to feed themselves.