In an SHTF situation, desperate will turn to desperate measures to stay alive. That’s why a lot more people than normal will turn to dumpster diving following a disaster to scrounge for food or anything else they can get.
But dumpster diving is also about a lot more than just climbing into the back of a dumpster and scavenging for anything of value that you can find.
Here’s what no one told you about dumpster diving:
It’s Not Just the Homeless Who Dumpster Dive
Dumpster diving carries the stigma of being an activity that only the homeless do. In reality, there are a lot of people today who make good money by repurposing and selling items that they find in dumpsters.
Beyond being a viable money-making opportunity, when an SHTF disaster strikes, dumpster diving will turn into a demonstrable survival skill that more people will need to utilize to make it through tough times.
In short, there are far too many items of value that are left behind in dumpsters to just give up. When disaster strikes, scavenging for useful items in dumpsters may become crucial to your survival.
This leads us into our next point…
Repurposing Garbage Will Become Crucial For Survival
In general, the subject of repurposing trash is an under-discussed one amongst preppers and those in the survival community.
It’s a topic that needs to be talked about more simply because it’s going to become an increasingly common occurrence.
There are a lot of items of value that you’ll be able to find by dumpster diving. For example, you can find and reuse glass bottles as containers, drinking glasses, or candles.
You could reuse plastic you find for similar uses. You can use plastic bottles you find as fishing traps or garden planters, for example.
Paper and cardboard you find can also be repurposed for a great multitude of uses, such as for fire starting, recording notes, or for insulating shelters you build.
⇒ Backyard Projects That Might Get You Arrested
Additional useful items you may find via dumpster diving include furniture, clothes, or ordinary household items that people just decided to throw away.
You’ll Need To Bring the Right Tools
Dumpster diving will always be made easier if you bring about the right tools. Consider bringing the following:
A Small Flashlight
This will be especially needed if you plan on dumpster diving at night or in the evening.
Cane
You can use a cane to help pull things out of the dumpster that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
Knife
If you need to cut anything free, a knife will come in hand. Bringing a pair of scissors wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
You Should Protect Yourself With Safety Gear
You also need to value your protection and safety when dumpster diving. It’s very easy to sustain cuts and scrapes when diving into a dumpster, because you never know exactly what you’re diving into in the first place.
Related: How To Treat And Heal Wounds With Sugar
In an SHTF situation especially, even the smallest of cuts needs to be taken seriously because of the risk of infection. With that in mind, make sure you bring the following safety gear:
Bandana Or Mask
Make sure your mouth and nose are covered with a bandana or N95 mask that can filter through any particulates you encounter. Wearing goggles or glasses to protect your eyes isn’t a bad idea either .
Boots
Don’t dive into a dumpster wearing sandals or flip flops. Always wear waterproof shoes or boots that fully cover your ankles.
Gloves
Wear thick leather work gloves that can shield your hands against rusty or sharp objects in the dumpsters. Your hands and fingers are always at risk when sifting through items in a dumpster.
Pants And Jacket
Make sure your entire body is covered with thick clothing that can soak up liquids or offer protection against sharp objects. Always wear a full jacket and pants even if it’s hot out.
Be Strategic About the Dumpsters You Choose
Some dumpsters will be gross and contain nothing of value.
Other dumpsters will be somewhat cleaner and a goldmine for finding items of value.
You just have to be strategic about the dumpsters you choose to investigate.
Related: 6 Places You Can Go Dumpster Diving For Your Prepper Stockpile
Avoid going to dumpsters that are behind restaurants or bars. These dumpsters are typically smelly and slimy, and any food that’s been thrown in there will be gross and borderline inedible.
Instead, look for dumpsters in neighborhoods or behind apartment buildings. You’ll usually find clean cardboard or plastic packaging at the absolute minimum, and the chances of you finding perfectly clean household items that can still be used are high here as well.
It’s also worth checking out dumpsters that are located by shopping malls for the same reasons. You’d be surprised by the valuable items that people throw away here.
Have Someone Standing Guard While You Dumpster Dive
The best strategy for dumpster diving is to move in pairs. Have one person who actually goes into the dumpster, and another person who stays outside to keep watch and help pull items out.
This will make your dumpster diving efforts much easier and also significantly more safe.
Have Something To Transport Your Items Out
Bring an old shopping cart or a wheelbarrow you can have an easier time transporting any items you collect out.
Again, working in pairs will be to your benefit as one person can search for items in the dumpster while the other person can take them and load them into your transportation device of choice.
Today, dumpster diving is something that people either do to help get them through hard times or to repurpose items to make money on the side.
In an SHTF situation, it’s going to become something that more people depend on for their very survival. Just keep the above tips and factors in mind before you dive into a dumpster yourself.
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dumpster diving and garbage picking during a severe SHTF will see a HUGE upsurge – your garbage pile included – and – if its severe enough food will be at a premium – for OPSEC be selective & careful in your garbage handling – you should be saving your metal cans & any paper/corrugated – but anything food oriented refuse need to be eliminated – tipping off your food stocks could be a critical mistake that a raider type takes advantage ….
I’d be eliminated any garbage accumulation entirely – for several reasons including health & safety – taking it and doing a burn during a neighborhood patrol ….
A caveat to dumpster diving may encounter homeless or someone living there. Dead human and animal rotted bodies. In rough times might find failed aborted babies, used drug needles and contact diseases like contact Hepatitis. As people dig through the trash.
Beyond dumpster diving.
Believe in tough times we may see more dead dumped human bodies and less animal bodies in dumpster. As it is more exceptable to eat animals than humans in America. Look what China eats everyday.
Currently we got unvetted people. from many countries flooding the open Southern Border, who be cannibalistic in tough times.
Past history in the old West, the Donner Party, people did eat their fellow comrades. A few decades ago somewhere in the South American mountains a passenger plane crashed. Some survivors ate some of the frozen dead.
Still in Asian countries there are cats, mostly dogs breed to be eaten by locals.
For those who have traveled outside of America or been in the military. You will see things unimaginable other people and cultures do for food.
At least the United Nations want people to be vegetarians and consume plenty of bugs. While they eat steak, lobster and potatoes, maskless in the next final COVID lockdown.
What will you plan to do?
You can find insects, bugs in some dumpsters too. yum!, NOT!!
We generally put repairable/ useable items on the park strip in front of the house.
They get salvaged very quickly.
In good times that’s okay. In desperate times a calling card of possible hidden looting treasures inside.
In the future you might want to scrounge the dumpsters. As activist of climate change are banning anything gas operated by convoluted laws.
Gas generators, stoves, water heaters dumped for all things electric BS.
Those gas products will come back, if we get adults back in charge.
I’ve found new clothing, arts and crafts supplies, knitting yarn, office supplies, books, candle making supplies, coffee cups, baby clothing and more in store dumpsters. Many times grocery stores throw away perfectly fine food still in clean containers. I used to get “pig food” from stores the was actually nearing or just at sell by date. Still completely fine to eat. One time I had 20 gallons of milk in sealed plastic jugs. I shared with a few friends then made cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, soft herbed farmers cheeses, and yogurt. All quick and easy and that extended the life of the milk. Freezing would have saved the milk as well but I didn’t have that much space. But for a few days my boys all drank their fill of milk. I even made panache candied nuts. That is usually brown sugar, cream, and maybe some butter. I just used some milk and butter in the brown sugar, then cooked off more of the liquid. It candied beautifully. We regularly got fruits, vegetables, pastries, and breads. For the pigs. But there was nothing wrong with any of it.
As a kid we also gleaned harvested fields and orchards. Always with owners permission. Sometimes at a small charge. Sometimes free for the picking. Once I traded labor for fruit. Picked a small pear orchard and we kept 1/2 of the boxes for us. It took 2 days. We sold enough far away, where we lived, so our neighbors had pears to can, we canned and sun dried all we wanted, and covered our gas for the trip and had money left to send several kids to sumner camp.
I also ask about picking trees I see going unharvested. I’ve gotten a lot of fruit for my family that way. Two yearsago I asked the director of the community pantry about the apples on 4 dwarf trees in the front yard. She told me to pick all of them I wanted. I picked 3 trees and encouraged 2 men to share the 4th tree. I made applesauce and canned it. Then I shared with a friend who is raising 3 grandchildren. Eventually I got the jars back.
My youngest son watched and helped. Found a tree of apples to pick and canned them for his family. I gave him my mothers old pressure canner. Later he bought another canner and a canning book. He’s excelled at learning to can. Food we get from the community pantry is often canned. Milk, butter, fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow I’m canning a case of green grapes in a light syrup. I may can 2 or 3 quart jars of baby potatoes.
Dumpster diving – “Try that in a small town”
Most people won’t go near the health contaminated dumpsters, unless very desperate. If in the waning days of city services there maybe garbage pickup. People like in big cities, NYC will start piling garbage up on the street curb.
In the suburbs more likely roamers, looters will have a good idea what you got hidden inside the home.
Depending on where your at you’ll be running out of dump space to hide your refuse. Your bags of human and pet waste among the food waste will be a give away too.
It is hilarious we have this type of article post during this Biden economy.
The upper crust or institutional powers have caused our economy to make us the scrounger poor. We have people that have a utopian liberal outlook that big government will save us from all things evil. A false sense of security.
A Cultural Revolution is happening.
We need to do better, start by taking personal accountability. Hold those elected and non-elected bureaucrats accountable for all things they do to us. Voted the bums out, fire the non-elected ones too, clean house.
Don’t care for ESG, DEI or DIE, political activism, some of us voters are partly responsible for this mess. It does not happen in a vacuum. Marxism didn’t happen overnight either.
Do we really want to dumpster dive or not?
Remember during COVID we lost our jobs, businesses and freedoms. The politicians never lost their jobs. They lived well steak & potatoes, flying private jets, big SUV’s. Their kids went to private schools that stayed open during COVID, even unmasked at some schools.
Your kids got dumber, schools closed, losing valuable learning time gone.
CA Gov. Newsom’s kids went to private school, his businesses stayed open while others were shutdown. Your possible Biden president replacement.
Possible Michell Obummer in the Demoncratic mix too.
The poorest people in large cities in Mexico don’t dumpster dive, they actually live at the giant landfills, building shelter out of garbage, eating garbage, drinking water that flows through the garbage. These souls are called ‘Garbacheros’, kids I’ve met over the years who grew up in the land fills are mildly retarded from all the heavy metals. That is SHTF.
Trash related.
Visited a friend in SoCali, in the mornings sometimes more on the weekends. You will overloaded small pickups with used dumpster or curb side free mattresses. Going back to Tijuana Mexican border side.
There are Mexican scrounger driving through neighborhoods for free stuff.
My friend tells me for over 50 years the Tijuana sewer plant is so overloaded. The overflow goes into the Tijuana river into the pacific ocean beaches.
The American tourist beaches close are closed half the time to sewage spills. Locals, tourists and military personnel, like Navy Seals are getting sick too.
Tons of dumpster trash fills up the TJ river the city has to clean it up.
No wonder people are leaving Cali.
So next time we think about dumpster diving, is it worth our health. When SHTF, there may not be medical help to treat you after digging in the dumpsters.
That is so true!!! My church has done twice a year repeated missions for 15 years. I’ve gone on two. Work then health issues prevented more for me. It’s heartbreaking to see. The people we encountered were so precious and sweet in spite of their circumstances. We built a church there and support those who need spiritual healing along with addictions and send the children to school well equipped so that they can break the generational chains of being born there. I met a lady who had her daughter there and the daughter had her daughter there. 3 generations born in the dump. Humanity can do better!! God can shine Anywhere, even in human dumps! Please everyone reach out to those you encounter and pour out Kindness.
No wonder we Americans will need to dumpster dive:
We need more church organizations doing the right thing for American’s first attitude. Build up America first so we can help others second.
The border churches and do-gooder types, have helped the illegal’s crossing the Southern before, during and probably after Biden’s China policies destroy America.
Those people coming to America are not really looking to assimilate to American borders, language and culture. They bring their same mindset that they left from the old country. Have them fix their own countries first.
If don’t believe it, go walk down some of those poor neighborhoods during the daytime. No English spoken, foreign language business signs posted.
A lot of us retired seniors are being pushed from our homes to the streets. By Biden’s economy. While liberals give aid and comfort to the illegals. Free welfare money, free homes or lodging, free education, free food.
Americans are second or third class citizens to illegals being first class.
Why should taxpayers pay income tax the greatest political scam in America; the IRS? It was invented by politicians not us citizens.
Some paper/cardboard that is not food contained can be remade into pulp logs that give off very little smoke when well dried. Bags of shredded papers can be used for insulation or converted into pulp logs.
I’m growing mushrooms in a mix of shredded cardboard and coffee grounds. I watched for cardboard new fruit trees were shipped in. Not contaminated. We saved half a years used coffee grounds to get started.
We as people like to think this as poverty
But all around the world the rich, lavish , stuffy people throw thier waste away
much of it is good , some very good , some like new and some just waste
but the truth be known people like to just clear out what they dont want
my father used to dumpster dive , He from the depression , always found much that was like new and reuseable
spoiled as we are , we dont consider recycling or climate change Lies , we just throw out
a feeling of wealth , and success
if i would have been alert and thinking like a wise man and not a robot trained by the TV , Radio, Society Schools of Follow , not think , I would have looked , recycled and found the gems of the dumpster
well that being said
you are taught as you are , and think like your trained to think
Think outside the box , use old and outdated to create and build better
This is what teachs common sense , the ability to think , not like the crowd or others
Could have build many houses from the old construction materials i watched thrown away for time schedules
out garbage is loaded with excess and wealth
NOT because of anything other than complacency and habbit , lazyness
Wealth in excess , Too much , Too little concern for future procurement
one thing for sure is when your poor , you change your ways , and think outside the box for survival , use what you have for survival , make due with what you have for survival
that is in essence prepping
Yes in the context of the depression 1.0 era, dumpster diving was getting what the wealthy thought was trash. But treasure to poor Demoncrat’s that voted for some of those liberal polices back then.
Today’s dumpster diving is a choice of doing or not to dive.
During what I consider an actual SHTF situation, I expect the suspension of municipal waste services, and that people will fill the dumpsters with nasty infectious waste and then pile it on the streets and walkways after that. The “treasures” available in dumpsters are there now, not so much what I would want to dig in to during SHTF.
I know it has recently been established by group consensus that the SHTF is now, but I believe it will certainly be in stages, this being entry-level SHTF.
We can’t fix stupid. Take America back is now or never. We are past the tipping point, were closer to going over the waterfalls.
Thank you bleeding hearts of America.
Youtube has several individuals who are professional dumpster divers and show their successes, and occasional failures. Good for visual training and entertainment both.
Dumpster diving is potentially profitable now.
I suspect in a SHTF situation that a) the quality of what is thrown in dumpsters will rapidly decline – a lack of truck resupply will push expiry dates in stores/people stock piling etc means there will be less fresh food thrown out (except freezer foods, which you shouldn’t dive for), and b) that there will be incredibly fierce competition for whatever is in the dumpsters – is it worth losing your health in a fight over week old bananas? Plan to not dumpster dive.
Amen, from a Southern brother. In a crisis or SHTF, you can’t fix to regain health. Those dumpster will become nasty pits of fifth.
Here in our town in southern NH people have been charged with trespassing for dumpster diving. People have been charged for it AND for tossing stuff into a random dumpster. They call that theft of services, because the person who rented the dumpster is losing out on that space your fast food bag took up.
But I think during a SHTF scenario the police will have better things to do.
The best truth of this article is foraging in pairs. Diving is an option, but realistically should be done with a plan. When SHTF occurs, ones life is in jeopardy and others will be brutal to get what you have found. I must really consider what to do with my waste When things go wrong. Having too much waste or not enough both have their Hazzards. Perhaps a big enough hole off-site for garbage and looters.
Robert2, I plan to check the wallets of people, and anyone who has identification indicating they worked for the UN will be put into the meal plan for my family. 🙂
For those saying the time to do it is now, I say, check where you live to see if it’s allowed. Where I live it is NOT permitted. Does it still occur? Most likely does. Especially when you also include raccoons and bears.
So, another caution would be to consider wildlife. Interrupting a skunk napping in the dumpster would not be welcomed. Nor would I want to get bitten by a rat.
Another item id included on the dumpster diving essentials list is a fairly long piece of stout rope. If the diver gets stuck in the bin and can’t climb out, the DD buddy could always throw one end of the rope over and ideally the diver could tie it around himself and then have friend help pull him out.
With so many places having just-in-time inventories, I’d expect many dumpsters to be devoid of much useful stuff pretty early on.
I do look at my trash now to see what I truly need to throw away and what could be used for something else. For instance bits of string used for large bags of animal food or cat litter is wonderful for typing up garden plants or creating netting. I like to test it now, so in a SHTF situation, I’ll have an idea of how well something might work
The Problem is leadership today is consumed with the correctness and not truth or reality
when the leadership is evil, depraved, corrupt and not worth the trash in the dumpster , you get DC today
Crime out of control
philamptrpy used to create crime , not help needs , used for laundering money , getting what you want and hiding from the common moron in school who lives, believes , follows the corrupt , like they know
well truth be know
The simple life is the best life
as Gods word say s , having food and clothing, shelter let us be content , doing good to mankind and loving our neighbor so they might see the goodness of God and praise his name
Dumpster diving has been and will be (not necessarily in order) entertainment, reusable items (clothing) for one use projects, think septic work, animal feed (grocery stores w/o compactors), interesting dust collectors and exercise.
Food products in unbroken/ undamaged original packaging that hasn’t been covered in cat litter so long as it hasn’t picked up odors, mold etc.
Tools, yep, drills, table saws, saw horses. Been there, found that.
New in original packaging, found a brand new HO scale train set.
Shelving, wire racks, building supplies.
Use common sense. Do Not climb in the dumpster! Don’t argue over trash no matter how good it looks. If it stinks it’s better to leave it. Perishable stuff (foods that should be kept frozen but it’s thawed). Meat regardless of state is usually a steer clear item.
If it weirds you out then leave it be. Easy preasy.
One thing I find is antibiotics. Those I keep for emergencies and have had to use them.
This story reminds me of a line from the Denzel Washington movie “The Book of Eli”.
When telling the girl about the time “before”, he said, “we threw away things that people would kill you for now” Something to think about.