Looks like Councilman Doug Emery may propose banning Dumpster diving in Lincoln. That sound you hear is the collective groan of Lincoln's college students as they realize they may soon lose their primary source of affordable home furnishings.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that garbage left out for trash pick-up is, for all intents and purposes, public property as far as the Constitution is concerned. What you throw out is mine to snoop through. I hope you're adequately destroying all those bank records, incriminating receipts, and embarrassing prescription medication packages.
The City, however, could come in and extend your privacy rights to include your garbage up to some arbitrary point (i.e. its collection by authorized personnel, its arrival at the dump, or whatever). Or it could tighten trespassing laws to prevent unauthorized access to garbage containers. There's nothing stopping the City from banning the act.
The question is, should the act be banned? Dumpster diving, as the term is commonly understood, usually refers to an informal recycling and/or reuse program. To that extent it's hardly a bad thing. But, although I don't have much experience with folks digging through my trash, I can imagine a number of negatives come with the neutrals and positives: shady characters, littering, and so on.
Now that this is on my mind I'm all paranoid about the stuff in my trash I might not want anybody to find. Excuse me while I go pulverize the contents of my garbage can into a fine powder.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
Wow. Is this really a huge problem here? Do we everything else in this city running so smoothly (how did that street de-icer work this morning, folks?) that we can make a law about dumpster diving? I guess we did already take the upholstered couches off the front porches. What will we come up with next?
No wonder people have a hard time taking this council very seriously. Between Robin running her pie hole and stuff like this, it’s just ridiculous.
except Student at UNL that do this twice a year? Really-the biggest dumpster diving participants are on campus anyway, and diving there, within the same day or two of the stuff being dropped in there. Unless local business can show some compelling need for yet another worthless law that really isn’t addressing something that is a problem, Im not for it. They can always put up a No Tresspassing sign-problem solved.
With as much as Americans waste every day, I think this should be allowed all over the country.
Seems like a way to punish those less fortunate.
I live in an apartment complex and people do this at least once a week. I am truly scared that I will be a victim of identity theft. I can’t afford a shredder and don’t have any other way to get rid of them. I cut up financial statements, but there is a lot of stuff with my name on it in there. I can’t believe that this will be a big problem if it passes. Emery also said that he did not propose this, but it was the LPD and some neighborhood program that have concerns over identity theft.
After reading up on this I saw that is was not targeting the can collectors like I thought.
We use our dogs as shredders. The dogs love to chew on our mail so we used it to our advantage. We rip off the piece of the junk mail with our info on it and place it on the coffee table where the pooches get it all sneaky like and destroy. If you wanna dig through poo to get my info, you earned it 😉
I believe that one of the shredding companies will do a huge community shredding thing once a year or so. You might want to save that stuff and take advantage. Either that or throw it in a bin if you have one at your job.
I think once a year, Union Bank hosts a shredding event in conjunction with Paper Tiger Shredding. JB, maybe you should look on Craigslist or Freecycle to find a used one cheap. I gave my old one away when I upgraded. I’ve given shredders as Christmas gifts. I think everyone should have one.
I think Doug Emery had a good response in the LJS comment section regarding this. It sounds to me like a suggestion was made, and discussion was requested.
Can’t beat a discussion to find out people’s ideas, in my opinion.
They emphasize Oh NOES! the Identity Theft! but really, if you put your trash out the same day (residence) as pickup, it’s doubtful that someone is going to go through your individual trash unless they are looking specifically for you. Passing this ordinance just because of the off chance of identity theft, when there are so many other places you leave your ID life every day, is making another law for something that is a statistical blip. There are already laws against ID theft, and trespassing is already illegal as well, so what will this accomplish?
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