How to prevent dumpster diving

If you came here because you don't want people to go into your dumpsters we have some good tips for you. If you're a dumpster diver and wondering why we have this page: please help edit this page so that people will opt for reusing their trash instead of locking away their dumpsters.

Half of all food is wasted. There are folks who try to reduce this waste, in sometimes creative ways. It's understandable that shop owners are not always happy with this form of recycling. Here we try to give some ideas to make everyone happy, including shop owners and dumpster divers.

Food

Many dumpster divers will be happy to arrange a pick up time to collect food that you can't sell anymore.
Make sure that you don't waste any good food. Contact your local charities, they'll probably be happy to use it.
Food that is unsuitable for human consumption can often still be good enough for animals. Contact your local farmers or friends with dogs (in case of meat) or chickens.
In the worst case you can make sure that the stuff is used for composting or bio energy.

Other stuff

Don't throw away good products, or even products that are easily repairable
Charity shops should price to sell quickly & reduce the price of products that don't sell at the initial price. Pulping good books & recycling the fabric of nearly new clothes is a waste!
Schools should never bin books - you can sell online (e.g. Ebay, Alibris) & / or contact a local charity. They might collect!

Identity theft

If you are worried about identity theft you can do several things:

buy and use a shredder for your documents
destroy any CDs with data
if you dispose of computers, take out the harddrives and keep them for future backups

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