The company that I work disposes of a lot of goods that are either close to expiration date, seasonal merchandise after the season is over, or returned/damaged items. A lot of it goes to a hazardous waste company to avoid government fines, but almost as much goes into our dumpster. The question has been raised as to why we don’t donate the food and other items to charity, and we have been told that the risk to the company is too great–in other words, if someone gets sick from a can of tuna that was nearly expired we could be liable. (You’d think that the charities would have a release of liability form, no? I know that a lot of the supermarkets donate old bread and other groceries.)
Our dumpster is locked so there are no dumpster divers (although we do get people stealing our cardboard bales, sometimes one piece of cardboard at a time!) but other companies are not so concerned about what happens to it after it leaves the building.
That brings me to this article about a professional dumpster diver named Matt Malone. He doesn’t fit the profile of the person you might think of diving in dumpsters, but for him it started out as an innocent adventure and he now estimates he makes more per hour by dumpster diving than he does in his full-time six-figure salary job as a security specialist.
Based on his estimates, if were to devote himself to it full-time he would earn over $250,000 annually. Most of it is from companies like Staples, Office Depot, Best Buy, etc. but it really makes you think how many dollars are being needlessly lost at every company. How many homeless people could be fed? How many kids could get a printer? Makes you wonder.
It’s a long article but worth a read. There’s also a bit about the legality of dumpster diving and some numbers about how much is actually recycled.