Trash picking...an art...

[ElKy]

so last night i put my trash out.
it included 2 trash barrels with bags in them and a recycling bin overflowing with bottles and cans from Saturdays party.
i even had beer boxes filled with beer bottles next to it.
about 8:30 last night i hear a car door and then notice the vehicle idling in front of my house for what seemed a long time.
so i go up stairs to look out and see who is sitting in front of my house.
there was a full sized dodge van sitting there.
In the front passenger seat was a large woman and a child seat mounted between the front seat with an infant in it.
the slider was open and there were two seats along the drivers side facing the passenger side. in one seat was another large woman and in the other seat was another child about 2 years old.
the inside of the van was stacked with bags and boxes of bottles and cans.
there was a guy going thru my recycle bin and he took the whole thing and put it in the van so the lady in back and him could go thru it.
meanwhile another woman was going thru my neighbors trash.
she brought over a stack of what looked like plastic plates from their trash and handed them thru the passenger side window to the lady there.
she then went back to their trash and grabbed a trash bag out of the barrel, brought that over to the van and handed the whole bag thru the passenger side window. the woman in the passenger seat sat there and dug thru it with it in her lap.

amazingly, when they were done they put everything back on the curb nice and neat.

but i swear they spent more in gas with the van idling than they found in bottles.

 

[frenchblueC2]

wow, that's kinda sad.
and creepy

 

[BrApple]

very interesting.


we have this couple, and I use the term loosly as she looks like a mail order bride or something along those lines, either way the guy sits in the car and makes her pick through the recyclablies dumster to fish out cans and bottle. the car is running the whole time. she uses one of those grabbing arms as the openning is about a 8 inch whole in the side of the dumpster.

I don't know why, maybe because he makes her do this in all types of weather but it greatly irritates me. Maybe its partly the fact its private property also ...

 

[ctmystique]

Let's do some math $50/ .05= 1000 bottles So to make $250 a week one would have to collect 5000 bottles. Sounds like too much work for me. I'll stick with my lousy job.

 

[rouar]

Reminds me of my visit to Syracuse a few weeks ago. Some people were calling up at us asking if we could throw down the beer bottles on the porch balcony. None of us (that were awake) lived there so we didn't really know what to say. The entire city itself is unreal - lots of poverty and then you have Syracuse University with kids driving Porsches.

At least they cleaned up, unlike last time. Pretty curteous.

 

[TGO]

These people gotta make money...i mean if you just look at the sheer volume of bottles/cans they pick up, it adds up!

There was a bum around the neighborhood my cousin's lived in. Supposedly he saved up enough bottle money to buy himself a car, which he now lives in!

Lots of peopel do this stuff around here, and for the most part they're polite about not making a mess, or lots of noise.

My grandfather was a garbage man and he used to bring home stuff he found inthe trash all the time! He still does sometimes!

I myself tend to take stuff people throw away as far as computers go as well...my computer is someone elses old computer that they were getting rid of, with a couple of gigs of ram i took from another person's computer whose motherboard went bad. A few months ago i snagged a 2.4ghz P4 system for my dad, complete with flat screen that some old lady decided to replace when her hard drive died. Even today I went to a job where i was told to replace a router that was acting up, so, I took the old one home...loaded DD-WRT and booyakasha! Perfectly fine...Oh, and lets not forget my beloved 19" sony trinitron monitor a client gave my "to get rid of"

 

[99RedCSVT]

You'd be surprised how much gas a vehicle idling takes. Plus if it was a diesel, its way better sitting there idling than a gas engine.

 

[98TredSVT]

Aren't the UPS trucks diesel? I know they shut off there trucks every 30 feet if they have a delivery, not sure if its for security or to save gas but I thought diesels were suppose to not be shut off much.

 

[99RedCSVT]

They shut it off due to security purposes. Well at least that's what I was told by my friends dad who delivers. But i'm not sure they are diesel. Sure don't sound like it. Just sounds like a big international gas engine.

 

[rouar]

My grandfather was a garbage man and he used to bring home stuff he found inthe trash all the time! He still does sometimes!

My neighbor growing up worked in the recycling center (dump). Now it was a small town where people didn't throw away valuables, but he occasionally came home with some pretty awesome stuff. Most memorable is a Foosball table from an arcade, complete with electronic scoreboard, working coin deposit and a clear guard fully enclosing the table.

 

[BloodyTomFlint]

UPS trucks are definitely diesels. Car and Driver tested some delivery vehicles a few months back. It was a good article. I love it when they do things like that.

 

[Matt R]

The reason they shut them off is because it's illegal to leave a diesel engine idling for longer than 10 minutes. Personally I think it is more polluting to shut the thing on and off every 2 seconds. I've seen the initial burst of crap coming out of a diesel when it starts up...

 

[rouar]

The reason they shut them off is because it's illegal to leave a diesel engine idling for longer than 10 minutes. Personally I think it is more polluting to shut the thing on and off every 2 seconds. I've seen the initial burst of crap coming out of a diesel when it starts up...

off topic...

I'll never forget an emissions question I got wrong when I was in elementary school (2nd grade? 4th?) ... the question was "is it worse to leave a car running for 1 minute or to shut it off and start it again" .... me, thinking too much, remembered bursts of black smoke/etc when a car starts, and reasoned that it was more pollutive than 1 minute's worth of idling.

I got the question wrong ...

 

[ctmystique]

For some reason the fact that you were being tested about that in grade school bothers me. The kids in America are so far behind the rest of the world in math and science skills yet the educators are brainwashing kids with PC environmental crap. It's just disgusting. Not to mention that the answer to that question is subjective and depends on the age and condition of the motor.

 

[TGO]

UPS trucks are definitely diesels. Car and Driver tested some delivery vehicles a few months back. It was a good article. I love it when they do things like that.

the newer ones are...the old school ups trucks that are stickshift aren't diesel as far as i can tell, but there are some new trucks going around that look mor elike a fedex truck, but brown of course. those are diesels. automatics too from what i've seen. atleast here.

 

[Buddy Palumbo]

FWIW , the UPS delivery trucks around my area are all gas engines , not diesels .

 

[zorrex]

For some reason the fact that you were being tested about that in grade school bothers me. The kids in America are so far behind the rest of the world in math and science skills yet the educators are brainwashing kids with PC environmental crap. It's just disgusting. Not to mention that the answer to that question is subjective and depends on the age and condition of the motor.

I agree. I think kids need to know a little more geography, too. Some many kids (and even adults, too) can't even pick out the US on a world map. WTF????. Needs less Al Gore.

FWIW , the UPS delivery trucks around my area are all gas engines , not diesels .

I can't be certain, but the UPS trucks around here SOUND like diesels, but that could be deceiving...

 

[iBrent]

I can't be certain, but the UPS trucks around here SOUND like diesels, but that could be deceiving...

I thought all those fleet vehicles were CNG?

 

[JSmith]

I believe that there is a federal law that basically states that any article put out to the curb in front of your property becomes public domain. This law is in effect so that the sanitation companies can come handle your containers to collect the trash. It also allows others to come and rummage through and take what ever they want weather its for good or bad.

Its one thing when someone comes and takes empty containers to collect the deposit or take things to do what ever with them. Its another when they go opening up trash bags looking for personal information with the intent to use it maliciously.