We had some fun today, I made comments at the City Council meeting regarding their proposal to ban 'dumpster diving'.

The fun part was the protest activity outside.

News Channel 4 broadcast live from the scene at noon. You can see video of the noon broadcast online. A more in-depth report concerning the issue broadcast at 5PM and again on the Tad Dunbar Report at 6:30PM. The latter report provides a fair view of the debate and includes a balance of input from various voices with an interest in the issue. Both videos are available at KRNV's website here: Reno council considers banning 'dumpster diving'

MSNBC has a syndicated version of the KRNV write-up, no video included, available here: MSNBC Reno Dumpster Dive.

KTVN Channel 2 was also on the scene, the clips are not available online but a story published today including some points on the issue can be found here: City Council Discusses Legalities of Dumpster Diving.

There were shots of this blog on the KTVN broadcast, specifically the post regarding Dumpster Diving Ethics. Save Reno Dumpster Diving supports KTVN's inclusion of this site being integrated into their webpage format, to see the mash-up, go to http://www.KTVN.com and then hit the  "Local News" tab and the "News Links" in the box selection and finally hit the 'Dumpster Diving in Reno Link' [I know a bit tedious, but the KTVN site has dynamic links within its format].

Hey all....

Tomorrow is Reno City Council's "Discussion and potential direction to staff regarding initiation of an Ordinance to Restrict Scavenging of Garbage" (This is item L.6 on page ten of tomorrow's Agenda).

This proposed action targets some of the most downtrodden and voiceless individuals of our city--the homeless, the unemployed, the laid-off.

Not to mention, it attacks the activities of Food Not Bombs, hobby curb crawlers, Freegans, trash bin divers, found object artists, dumpster divers, gleaners, recyclers, urban hunter gatherers and anyone who has ever retrieved perfectly good items from the trash, dumpster, curb or dump. 

Join a people's protest to Save Reno Dumpster Diving and all the cultural, artistic, and alternative lifestyles associated with it. Tomorrow between 12-noon and 1pm, we will be on the sidewalk in front of the Reno City Hall Building (Facing Virginia St., the official address is 1 E. First Street). Bring your signs and meet us there, we will be providing some "Picket Signs" until they run out.

You can also speak at the Council meeting, whether you are for this ban or not, you have the right to be heard. Fill out a blue "Request to Speak/Public Comment Form" available at City Hall. Give it to the County Clerk and you should be provided the opportunity to make comments (maximum time allotted per individual is three minutes) starting at 12-noon in the Council Chambers on the first floor of the City Hall building.

If anyone has questions or comments, e-mail me at: SaveRenoDumpsterDiving@gmail.com

Today's Antiques Roadshow was a "Roadshow Special Edition". Titled From Trash to Treasure, the whole hour featured items of value--some topping US$100,000.00--pulled from the trash. For anyone who missed it, you can watch all the appraisals here: Antique Roadshow: From Trash to Treasure.

There is a section of particular interest on this episode for the Save Reno Dumpster Diving crowd. A Reno Dumpster Diver pulled a US$800-900 1820 John Trumbull print from a Reno Dumpster and is featured in an appraisal on this special trash-filled hour, you can watch the clip here: Reno Dumpster Diver Featured on Antique Roadshow.

Here is the info on the episode:

"Antiques Roadshow
Trash to Treasure
Monday, December 15, 8:00pm CHANNEL 5 (KNPB/Channel 5)Valuable items recovered from the trash are featured. Included: an autographed script of "The Informer," an Oscar-winning 1935 John Ford film; a rare 1885 Zuni Indian pot; items from Louis Comfort Tiffany's Laurelton Hall mansion.
CC, Stereo TVG Educational Taping Rights: 1 year"

In line with the Dumpster Diving of antiques and other valuables, in Forbes Magazine about a year ago they ran a feature in their section "Piece of the Week" called Dumpster Diving Pays Divedends, in which:

"A rare Arts & Crafts chair made by Charles Rolhfs and rescued from the trash made auction history last week. Expected to fetch around $30,000, it sold for the record price of $198,000.

Pulled from the neighbor's trash,..." (click the link above for full story)

So, we can conclude from the evidence presented in today's post--One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure. What are you waiting for? Take the day off or get extreme--quit your job--and...

dive a dumpster or your neighbor's trash bin (once it is on the street, of course); there could be a $198,000 chair waiting for you to save it. Oh, and while you're at it, don't forget--Save Reno Dumpster Diving.

A curious story about the word Dumpster from On Dumpster Diving
by Lars Eighner (btw, I recommend checking out the above link for the full 'On Dumpster Diving' chapter excerpt from the 1993 book Travels with Lizbeth):

"Long before I began Dumpster diving I was impressed with Dumpsters, enough so that I wrote the Merriam-Webster research service to discover what I could about the word Dumpster. I learned from them that it is a proprietary word belonging to the Dempster Dumpster company. Since then I have dutifully capitalized the word, although it was lowercased in almost all the citations Merriam-Webster photocopied for me. Dempster's word is too apt. I have never heard these things called anything but Dumpsters. I do not know anyone who knows the generic name for these objects. From time to time I have heard a wino or hobo give some corrupted credit to the original and call them Dipsy Dumpsters."

This etymology of Dumpster inspired me to search more to find out about the man who invented the "Dumpster", whereupon I encountered this page: Fountain Citians Who Made a Difference: George R. Dempster

"By the end of his career he would hold over 75 patents, but his best known patent was the one that revolutionized solid waste disposal. In 1935 he [George R. Dempster] conceived the idea of the Dempster-Dumpster to facilitate construction work. Competitors saw it working so well that they asked that similar units be made for them. Shortly thereafter, he patented the idea and, before long, the five brothers were devoting their entire time to manufacturing Dumpsters at Dempster Brothers, Inc."

So--remember kids--that's no lower cased dumpster you're diving in; get nerd with it and give respect to its inventor. When someone asks where you bought that lovely meal you just served them, proudly confound them and proclaim, "It came from Mr. George Dempster-Dumpster."  

Christina Nellemann, is back with a new post. She wrote for Save Reno Dumpster Diving on 12/8/08 about the difference between dumpster divers and identity thieves. 

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Some things I have found in Dumpsters:

*Several boxes of tile, including a box of slate tile that I have used for art and house projects.

*Packages of dry grout for said tile

*A nearly new life jacket for waterskiing

*An antique chair that I painted and sewed a cushion for

*Electrical and lighting components

*Books and magazines (including a couple dozen Playboys)

*CDs and DVDs (even a batch of pornographic DVDs...is there a pattern here?)

*Some logs from a cottonwood tree that I use for outdoor "tables"

*A firepit

*Computer components (hard drives, external drives, hubs, CD burners)

*Clothes and shoes

*Stuffed animals

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Christina Nellemann has the design company Feline Design. You can read more about her design inspiration and dreams at her blog, The Nest Or view her professional organization and decluttering blog: www.declutterlife.blogspot.com. If you are interested in tiny houses, she writes a weekly post for The Tiny House Blog by Kent Griswold.

Tonight on the KOLO Newscast at 5:30PM there will be a report about Dumpster Diving. I just finished an interview with them and should be in the newscast. Check it out. Link to transcript of story here: http://www.kolotv.com/news/headlines/36083059.html.

Elsewhere in the mass media world, ABC's 20/20 had some dumpster diving shots in its profile of The Ultimate Cheapskate, you can catch a bit of it here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6443605

As homo sapiens aren't the only dumpster divers, maybe instead of looking for the government to give you a sense of security over your discarded goodies, we would all be the wiser by looking to nature and how some communities have then dealt with the "problem".

Enter the Bear Box, built to government spec to keep dumpster diving bears at bay--modifying a few of this product's features to keep the human animal at bay might be a wiser move than outlawing trash scavenging, curb crawling, bin trawling, and other forms of refuse reallocation.

Those who feel threatened by the dumpster diving hobbyist and the economically marginalized can then meander on over to Walmart and pick-up their Dumpster Dive proof trash bin. That is the perfect future, but, in the mean time, the truly concerned individuals can at least head out to their nearest big box store--take some personal responsibility--and buy, as well as use, a paper shredder on their potentially compromising documents.

Laws or not, that is the wise action to follow--especially when there are potentially identity thieving bears on the loose, as this clip demostrates: Dumpster Diving Polar Bears Caught in the Act.

The New York Times ran an interesting front pager a few days ago about how Trash has Crashed, it examines how the global economic downturn has hurt the recycling industry and is causing some cities to abandon their city "curbside" recycling programs. It is becoming cheaper for many municipalities to dump than to recycle. From an environmental perspective, such a turnaround is abominable--economics clearly triumph over sustainablity again. Check the "Trash has Crashed" link above to get a grasp on how the tide has turned against recycling.

On a more appetizing note, The New Agenda has a new article that should be dear to any dumpster diving gourmand's heart, Revolutionary Dining: From Garbage to Gourmet? It covers some of the philosophical underpinnings of the Freegan lifestyle and its ecological imperative.

Moving on, to round out this post, the City of San Diego currently has a movement afoot: www.SaveTheFirePits.com. It is worth a look because, like Save Reno Dumpster Diving, it shows the style of another grassroots approach to influencing City Government policy as it pertains to the existence of particular cultures within a city.

The Mall is not the only place to go "shopping" during the holiday season. Some set their sights on dumpsters for their gifting needs, an NPR audio report attests to such, check it out: Forget the Mall: Dumpster Dive for Holiday Gifts.

Keeping with NPR's archives, I found a great report from August 2006 that could be as appropriate today as it was then--when Northwest Airlines laid workers off in 2006, included with the feared pink-slip, they provided a list of recommendations for saving money. One of those recommendations, which caused outrage, was dumpster dive. Hear the report here: Northwest's Advice to the Laid Off: Dumpster Dive.

Scavenging to reduce your evironmental footprint is explored in an experiment untaken by a Newsweek reporter, who took-up the lifestyle of a "freegan" for a month--listen to an interview with her here: Next Big Thing: Writer Becomes a Freegan for a Month.

Today, Christina Nellemann is our guest blogger. She lives in the Reno area and has written about Dumpster Diving in the past for the Sierra Club's Sierra Magazine. You can read the article she wrote for them here: Talkin' Trash: Down in the Dumpster.

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As someone who has Dumpster dived in the past and continues to look out for perfectly good items that have been thrown in the trash, I feel I can recognize a big difference between Dumpster divers and identity thieves.

While researching my article for the Sierra Club, I spoke to dozens of people who Dumpster dive and found them to be educated, bright, creative and entrepreneurial. Many Dumpster divers are sometimes able to furnish their home, feed their families and make money selling items they have found in the trash. I think it is brilliant when someone can fix and sell or reuse something that another person has no use for.

What I did not find from these people was the desire to steal personal information. In fact, most of them who had found personal information such as credit card or bank statements were shocked that people were not shredding their statements. As a sometime diver, I have no desire to steal someone's personal information or participate in any kind of identity theft. I wouldn't even know how to start!

In short, Dumpster diving is for environmentalists and identity theft is for thieves.

Please, rather than throwing out items you don't want, take them to a local thrift store, give them to charity or take them down to the Really, Really Free Market in downtown Reno. Someone is sure to get some use out of what you don't want.

Really, Really Free Market Link:

http://tinyurl.com/6e52sw

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In addition to being a sometime diver, Christina Nellemann has the design company Feline Design. You can read more about her design inspiration and dreams at her blog, The Nest Or view her professional organization and decluttering blog: www.declutterlife.blogspot.com. If you are interested in tiny houses, she writes a weekly post for The Tiny House Blog by Kent Griswold.