The Delights of Dumpster Diving

My girlfriend came home from the city the other night all excited "Come and see what I've got in the trunk...I went dumpster diving!" We carried in armloads of the most beautiful exotic flowers - orchids and roses - all with those little plastic tubes attached to the stems. What a treasure, and thrown away like trash without a second thought! Admittedly, the flowers were no longer in their absolute prime, but once we took off the few dead blooms and removed the outer petals of the roses, we were able to fill 5 vases with the most beautiful arrangements. Then my friend reminded me that she used to get all the flowers for her parties from dumpsters in the flower market.

This incident got me all excited to know more about the curious activity of dumpster diving. So I decided to do a little "surfing" before attempting any "diving".
I was amazed to find a whole lot of information on the web, and one site in particular, www.wikihow.com , has six pages of information on "How to Dumpster Dive" complete with helpful tips, safety measures, sources for more information and lots of other useful suggestions.

There are rules of etiquette among serious dumpster divers (DD's), and after reading several blogs on sites such as www.groups.google.com/group/alt.dumpster and www.allthingsfrugal.com, I concluded that many of these people are actually decent eco-minded individuals doing a public service by recycling useful products that would otherwise end up in landfills. Mary "The Dumpster Lady" also believes that, according to the Law of the Universe, as a responsible DD you should "tithe what you dive" by donating some of what you find to worthy causes such as churches, food banks, crisis assistance centers, thrift stores and friends.

Counteracting a Wasteful Consumer Society