Home › Forums › Open Discussion › People going through recyle bins
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July 21, 2009 at 3:29 am #591623
madbassetsMemberEvery Monday (the day before our pick up day) there is a woman who goes through our recycle bin & takes out all the cans. I don’t know if I should get mad, if its illegal, or if maybe this is her only source of income? Has any one else had this problem? I’m not to sure what to do. She goes thru the entire bin, throws all the cans into the alley, which is noisy & my dogs go berserk. She then steps on them to flatten them & all bags them up & does put the rest of my recycling back in the bin.
July 21, 2009 at 3:48 am #672544
JoBParticipanti used to have someone who did that. i put them out in a separate box and they wouldn’t touch them… never came back… honest.
i don’t know if it’s illegal or not.
July 21, 2009 at 4:02 am #672545
JamesRocheParticipantIt is illegal, but it’s such a victimless crime. In these dark economic days, give someone a chance to make some spare cash on your cans.
July 21, 2009 at 4:06 am #672546
The Velvet BulldogParticipantI think once you put your “trash” at the curb, it’s public property and anyone can go through it. I came across a couple of guys going through the recycle bins one day and I let it bother me for about half a second before deciding they weren’t doing anyone any harm and were actually being kind of resourceful. When I was little, mum and I would pick up cans from the road and turn them in for cash, so I guess I can kind of relate.
July 21, 2009 at 4:34 am #672547
CarolPBMemberThis happend at my home, and I did nothing-feeling sorry for someone that has to dig through bins to make a little dough. But it did occur to me that one of the reasons the city can offer free recycle to us citizens is that they do make money from the take-in. kind of a conflict for me-who needs it more?
July 21, 2009 at 4:57 am #672548
FullTiltParticipantI would ask her to do it a bit quieter if she could. If you are comfortable with that. At the shop, I put all the cans in a separate bin, because people used to make a mess getting the cans out of the dumpsters.
July 21, 2009 at 5:25 am #672549
flowerpetalMemberSomeone would have to cite me the code before I believed that it was illegal. It must make such a small dent in the intake of cans for the City’s contractor. I like the idea of seperating these in advance. How difficult is that? Its a nice gesture; and in Full Tilts example, a saving of time for him.
July 21, 2009 at 5:39 am #672550
kgParticipantI hope all of you are taking care to sanitize any sensitive information that you are putting in your recycle bins such as credit card/bank statements or anything else with an account number on it.
July 21, 2009 at 5:56 am #672551
christopherboffoliParticipantI honestly don’t care who takes my metal cans away. But kg is absolutely right. Identify theft is a very serious problem. If you’re going to have random strangers pawing through your recycling I’d suggest shredding anything that contains sensitive information and putting the shredded paper in the yard waste bin with your food scraps.
July 21, 2009 at 3:52 pm #672552
JoBParticipantif you reclyle you have random strangers pawing through your recycling.. and there is nothing to stop any of them from pulling sensitive information from the pile as they sort.
We shred anything that has more than our name and address on the envelope… even the junk mail…
if you have a fireplace shredded paper makes great fire starting material.
July 21, 2009 at 4:04 pm #672553
flowerpetalMemberStrip shredded paper is better used as recycle. Bag it and put it in your recycle. Cross cut shredded paper cannot be recycled as the fibers become too short and should be composted.
I do however, resort to putting enough strip shredded paper in the bottom of my compost container just to reduce the gross factor.
July 21, 2009 at 6:09 pm #672554
JoBParticipantit really cuts down the gross factor if you put a layer in the bottom of your food waste container…
July 21, 2009 at 6:26 pm #672555
rdmParticipantWhy not just put the cans in a seperate bag so the person can easily pick them up without the noise? Might take a bit more time but could make things esier for everyone, my mother used to do that for a kid who lived down the street from us growing up.
July 21, 2009 at 9:15 pm #672556
HammertreeMemberSorry to go against the grain here but I have a big problem with letting someone go through my recycle bin. Yes, there are the innocent, but it lets thieves know exactly what you have purchased. I should not have to take the time to shred my new television box, but after the consensus of garbage generosity, I will shred junk mail too.
July 21, 2009 at 10:56 pm #672557
miwsParticipantOn the subject of shredding. Yes, *definitely* crosscut.
Before I bought my current crosscut shredder a few years back, I had a simple strip shredder, as that was all I could afford at the time. (I believe it may have been on sale as well.)
Once I noticed that a strip of shredded paper could easily have an entire line of info on it, I made it a point to shred the important info “vertically”, and then mix it up really well.
Sure, someone with enough time and determination could have possibly “put the puzzle together”, but at least they wouldn’t be able to get pertinant info from a single strip.
I’m a bit paranoid leaning on this, though I’ve never had any problems. So, I even tear off and shred the address labels from catalogs, before tossing the rest of the catalog in the recycle. Also, don’t forget the order form, with your info preprinted, that is usually stapled at the center pages of the catalog.
Sadly, our apartment building doesn’t have compost, or yard waste. So, though it’s not very often (maybe once every couple of months or so), I need to bag it up and put it in the garbage dumpster. :-(
Mike
July 22, 2009 at 12:50 am #672558
B-squaredParticipantI know of a couple of neighborhoods in Portland where people routinely put the aluminum cans, and bottles they are too lazy to turn in for the deposit, in a separate bag for just this reason. perhaps it’s more lucrative in Portland because of the deposit side of it. but if i kept them from rooting through the bin, that is probably a good idea. never know what you will miss shredding.
July 22, 2009 at 1:20 am #672559
saneyMemberwe use a shredding service where i work for personal documents. i just bring my mail to work with me and open it at my desk. then i can just put the few pieces of sensitive mail in the bin.
July 22, 2009 at 2:50 am #672560
JoBParticipantWhen we lived in Vancouver Washington, we put the bottles and cans that could be returned for deposit in a separate bin and a local boy scout troupe picked them up and turned them in for deposit in Oregon…
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