Dumpster Diving was Re: Washington DC area vintage sources (was RE:ebay) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

27 Oct 1998

...
  At 10:00 AM 10/27/98 -0000, you wrote:
>Sam wrote:
>> But I ended up getting a visit from my friendly
>> neighborhood police.  It seems some local concerned citizen saw me pulling
...
 >> out all sorts of computer gear from the trash
and decided something evil
...
 >> was being perpetrated.  Go figure.
>
>What did the police have to say about it?
>
>At what point does the contents of the dumpster become publicly available?
...
 >I imagine that this might be a different point than
the one at which police
...
  are aloud to
search for evidence, but IANAL. 
   I know a couple of guys that dumpster dive nearly every night.  The
 police have pulled them over numerous times.  They usually check them and
 their stuff then let them go. Sometimes they tell them to leave but that's
...
  all. They've never been taken in or arrested. 
FWIW There was a court case
...
  (supreme court?) some years ago that involved the
police searching trash
 cans for evidence. The court ruled that stuff thrown into the trash and and
...
  placed on the public right of way (street) for pickup
was publicly
 available and no longer private property.  Of course, many commercial trash
...
  dumpsters are still located on company property so
this may have no bearing.

I don't know what the law is in the UK regarding dustbins (trashcans) but
      regarding skips (dumpsters) it is something like:

Person X makes a contract with a waste disposal contractor Y.  Y delivers a
skip to X's premises, and probably leaves it in the road (at precisely the
worst place for motorists trying to get around it :-) ).  X throws stuff
into the skip, but it remains X's property, and to pull it out is theft.
Eventually X has thrown in all he wants and phones up Y to collect the
skip.  When Y does, the stuff in the skip becomes Y's property.

At work, I used to skip-dive a lot.  I was once told that I was breaking
the law because I had removed a Superbrain from the skip.  Not so - I am a
PowerGen employee; the item was PowerGen property, and I hadn't removed it
...
 from the PowerGen site; I actually offered L15 for it,
since that is what I thought it was worth.  However, skip-diving is now officially
banned.  I
have been quite strongly warned off several times, once for just looking at
the skip!  The warnings came from quite high up, passed down through my
boss.

They claim there is a policy by which items are offered to staff before
disposal.  Some stuff (PCs etc.) is offered by competitive tender.  Some
stuff (Commodore 8296) is offered to me personally for L1.  But a lot
(incomplete Silicon Graphics Personal Iris) just goes in the skip anyway.
I don't know how much goes in the skip - I don't go there very often now
:-( - but I just happened to be walking past and saw the Iris :-( :-(

Philip.