
In San Francisco, Making a Living from Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/us/trash-pickers-san-francisco-zuckerberg.html
======
blantonl
About 10 years ago on Christmas morning, my wife was out for her morning jog
and came across a full sized Yamaha keyboard stuffed in a trash bin placed at
the curb... looking to be in excellent condition. Presumably the homeowners
purchased a new piano or upgraded keyboard and simply threw this one away.

She called me and I drove down in a BMW (LOL!) and we barely were able to
stuff it in the trunk. 5 minutes later, and after digging out a 12v wall-wart
from the closet, I was pleasantly surprised that it powered up and worked
_perfectly_

My young son ended up loving it, and taking up piano as a hobby, and now
regularly competes in ragtime (of all genres!) piano competitions. If that had
never happened I'm not sure he would have ever taken up music like he did.
Crazy.

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_bxg1
"Trash picking is illegal in California — once a bin is rolled out onto the
sidewalk the contents are considered the possession of the trash collection
company...But the law is rarely enforced."

Good thing it's now been featured in the New York Times. /s

~~~
manfredo
Realistically, I think this law only exists for two reasons:

1\. To discourage dumping of the whole bin's contents on to the sidewalk -
happens often enough that it's an issue in some neighborhoods.

2\. To punish picking out private info from trash. Things like credit card
statements, utility bills, etc. that may contain sensitive information.

I really could not care less what people do with my trash as long as they
refrain from the above two points.

~~~
MrEldritch
I would actually assume that the reason the law exists is because rummaging
through dumpsters sounds like something a homeless person would do, and we
know how California likes to try and make it illegal for homeless people to
exist.

~~~
ALittleLight
Perhaps that's true in some parts of California. The parts I'm acquainted with
seem to be overflowing with homeless.

~~~
jonny_eh
Making something illegal doesn't make it go away.

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mykowebhn
Not just from a billionaire's trash. Not many people can afford to buy real
estate in the Bay Area, but there are many people with excess cash who can buy
a lot of goods. And so many people (read tech workers) who are not from the
Bay Area--or even if you are--change residences quite often. What this means
is that they often discard perfectly good items in the trash.

My wife and I, when we lived in Sunnyvale, would find perfectly good items (a
TV stand, chairs, tables) in the trash in our apartment complex from people
who, I'm assuming, moved.

~~~
vichu
I ran into this a lot during in university at the end of terms. Lots of people
moving out without a lot of time to get rid of their items - in particular
international students that couldn't bring items home with them for the
summer. Though I never took advantage of the situation, being a student that
was also moving myself, I'm certain I lost count of the number of mini
fridges, tables, lamps, etc. that were simply being tossed.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't understand that mentality. Couldn't they just _leave the things_ in
the apartment? Last time I changed the apartment, I essentially left it with
more appliances than there were when I moved in, since they were perfectly
fine, but I didn't have any use for them anymore.

~~~
mykowebhn
I like your suggestion in theory, but what if the new tenants don't need the
appliances you had left? Then they would have to take care of removing it.

If there were some app that could connect moving-out and moving-in tenants and
both sides could agree on what the moving-out tenants would leave behind.

~~~
dewey
I’m not sure you need another app for that. Both people would need to sign up
just for this one-off task. Usually if you take over a flat the previous owner
will just ask you if you want to take over x or y in my experience. Also from
my experience there’s a pretty good market in Facebook groups or classifieds
for these things in university cities as it happens all the time. When I
wanted to get rid of some item I just snapped a picture, out it on eBay
classifieds and 1h later someone would come and take some table, chair,
sofa...and leave. That seems like a solved problem already.

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werber
When I was broke and living in Paris I would fine neatly laid out valuables
all the time. The most memorable was a pile of classic Chanel in a cardboard
box that I got close to a thousand euros for. It's pretty easy for people to
just do that instead of mixing items which still have value with household
waste

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probably_wrong
For those like me getting a "you are browsing in Private Mode" window:
[http://archive.is/SIz0z](http://archive.is/SIz0z)

~~~
kristofferR
Man, it's so annoying that Archive.xx has decided to screw with 1.1.1.1 users
by redirecting their DNS requests to a non-working IP... :/

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wmil
"Mr. Orta’s favorite item retrieved from the trash is one that he will not
sell: a collection of newspapers from around the world documenting the course
of World War II. He wonders why anyone would have thrown that away."

Clearly someone died and their family didn't know what they were.

~~~
grogenaut
Or they didn't care. Or they had to liquidate their relatives stuff and get
back to their lives out many other reasons.

Hell I can barely keep on top of organizing my own stuff, have you ever tried
to culled through say a garage? Weeks of done right

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lokimedes
That trickle-down economy is really working for everybody.

------
gwern
"There’s a child’s pink bicycle helmet that Mr. Orta dug out from the garbage
bin across the street from Mr. Zuckerberg’s house. And a vacuum cleaner, a
hair dryer, a coffee machine — all in working condition — and a pile of
clothes that he carried home in a Whole Foods paper bag retrieved from Mr.
Zuckerberg’s bin...“It just amazes me what people throw away,” he said one
night, as he found a pair of gently used designer jeans, a new black cotton
jacket, gray Nike running sneakers and a bicycle pump. “You never know what
you will find.”...In the blue recycling bin marked with Mr. Zuckerberg’s
address, there were A&W diet root beer cans, cardboard boxes and a junk mail
credit card offer. In the black landfill bin were remnants of a chicken
dinner, a stale baguette and Chinese takeout containers."

Zuckerberg and his fellow millionaires/billionaires sure are living it up
there.

~~~
fenwick67
There's an amazing documentary titled "queen of Versailles" about a nouveau-
riche family in Florida. The family goes to Walmart all the time and they have
like 20 games of Monopoly, each kid has 10 bicycles they never ride, it's
surprising but rich people also just buy a bunch of crap.

~~~
toephu2
I don't think it would be a fair assumption that rich people buy a bunch of
crap just because you saw one rich family doing it in a documentary.

~~~
jstarfish
Indeed, the wealthiest people you don't know are the ones who don't do stupid
things like conspicuously consume.

There are more millionaires among your neighbors than they tend to let on.

------
heinrichf
Almost exactly a year ago, someone unsuccessfully tried to steal Zuckerberg's
trash:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16745057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16745057)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723595)

~~~
burtonator
You can't _legally_ steal someone's trash. The courts have ruled that once
you've put it in public it's abandoned and fair game.

The police do this all the time to suspected criminals. They just pick up
their trash and if there's evidence there it's admissible in court.

~~~
gwern
> You can't legally steal someone's trash. The courts have ruled that once
> you've put it in public it's abandoned and fair game.

This article specifically disagrees:

"Trash picking is illegal in California — once a bin is rolled out onto the
sidewalk the contents are considered the possession of the trash collection
company, according to Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, the company
contracted to collect San Francisco’s garbage. But the law is rarely
enforced."

~~~
DrScump
And SCOTUS disagrees with the article.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood)

~~~
athms
No it doesn't. The case wasn't about ownership of the trash. The case was
about whether the search was unreasonable. Did the person that disposed of the
trash have an expectation of privacy. In that specific case, the police asked
the waste company to set aside the trash allowing it to be examined and they
did this without a warrant.

------
test6554
I got a really fancy bed frame that was left on the side of the road. We
sterilized it, reattached one ornamental piece on the headboard and built or
own cross-beams to support the mattress. It works like a charm and looks
fantastic.

Conversely, a relative got bed bugs once and threw their whole mattress out on
the sidewalk and went inside. Later, she heard a truck driving up and looked
out the window and saw people loading the mattress into the truck. She ran
outside to warn them, but they seemed to have gotten spooked by this and drove
off quickly with the mattress.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Someone I know once went to take out the trash and found a perfectly good set
of cooking pots left next to the trash container. She picked them up and tried
to discretely take them home, only to be spotted by a neighbour... who ran
down the stairs, shouting "wait, wait, I also have covers for these!". Now she
has a set of perfectly good kitchen pots and a mildly embarrassing story to
tell :).

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dekhn
My parents live near a liberal arts university, and every year, they haul
thousands of dollars worth of gear thrown away by well-off graduating college
students (grateful dead tee -> trash on the way to wall street). For a while
they were returning gear to LL Bean to get money (I consider this a bad idea
and I believe the policies were changed to address this). They also collect
enough money a year from can redemption to go on a europe trip.

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shambolicfroli
How about a separate bin for reuseables, with a once-a-month pickup?

It should be clear, so scavengers could easily see if anything of interest was
inside.

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almost_usual
Does no one donate to Goodwill anymore?

~~~
_bxg1
Goodwill is actually incredibly shady, and I refuse to donate there any more:
[https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/10/25/goodwill-
industrie...](https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/10/25/goodwill-industries-
omaha-ugly-wage-ratios-define-nonprofit-business/)

That said, there are plenty of other charities and local donation spots in
many cities for reuse of even items that you wouldn't think would be valued.

~~~
drilldrive
How about the other large donation centers, particularly the salvation army?

~~~
vkou
The Salvation Army is incredibly anti-LGBT.

------
varshithr
"I'm digging, I'm digging, I'm searching right through that luggage One man's
trash, that's another man's come up" — Thrift Shop by Macklemore

------
daniel-cussen
So unfortunately your trash is also not private--you can expect that anything
you throw away can be surveilled and used against you in US.

Next hot item for the luxury home--an old-school incinerator, for privacy.

~~~
milesvp
Varies by state. State of Washington has laws protecting garbage. There is an
expectation of privacy even once the trash is picked up, and can’t be searched
without a warrant. Interestingly there are city laws regarding what you can
throw away in your trash with regards to recycling/compost and my wife is
eagerly waiting for these laws to be challenged in higher courts.

~~~
DrScump
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood)

------
asveikau
> In the black landfill bin [at Zuckerberg’s address] were remnants of a
> chicken dinner, a stale baguette and Chinese takeout containers.

He should have put all those items in the green bin.

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kneel
People who claim trickle down economics don't work aren't willing to fold up
their sleeves and work for it.

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noego
> _" Mr. Orta is a full-time trash picker ... Mr. Orta says his goal is to
> earn around $30 to $40 a day from his discoveries"_

That doesn't sound like a good use of his time at all. He's clearly a hard-
working and reasonably smart/capable man if he can support himself by thrash-
picking. Why does he not get a minimum-wage job? Even $11 an hour sounds like
a improvement over his current situation. Are minimum wage jobs hard to come
by in SFBA?

~~~
toephu2
SF minimum wage is $15/hr.

