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Monday, October 6, 2008

Portland Digging for Gold in Recession Era Trash

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 1:22 PM

At the advice of everyone in the world (including the Pulitzer Prize committee) I've picked up Cormac McCarthy's The Road. But reading that post-apocalyptic story at night and about The Great Recession during the day, my global outlook has turned grim. The banks will collapse. Sarah Palin will become president. The world will turn to ashes. We will eat each other.

So in this mindset I was riding my bike today along Alberta and wound up behind a guy hauling a trailer full of aluminum cans scavenged from trash piles. The father and son in The Road are in a similar situation, collecting in a grocery cart every useful scrap they find and seeing value in items tossed out long ago by society, so I stopped to talk to the can collector about his perspective on the task that will soon be everyone's livelihood.

The can collector goes by the name Diver and turned out to be surprisingly good-humored. The back of his can trailer reads "Trailer Trash: Landfill Reduction Specialist."

dumpster_diver.jpg

"How much do you make in a day usually?" I asked.
"It depends what's in the dumpsters," Diver replied, "One time I made $5,000 off a single dumpster!" He explained that a couple times he's found gold and jewelry in dumpsters, what he imagines is families cleaning out dead people's condos and not wanting to take the time for an estate sale. There's no good, reliable big-win dumpsters, he says, "It's purely random, like a slot machine." Besides, his favorite dumpsters he keeps secret. Once a dumpster gets popular, it's all over. "It'll get locked up. Some people, they don't have couth, they're not ethical," Diver explained, becoming the only person besides myself I've ever heard use the word 'couth', "They'll leave a mess, hang out by the dumpster."

"How much do you think you make a year?" I asked.
"I'd say about $50,000," Diver said. I didn't believe him AT ALL, so he explained the economics. He gets some cash for bottles and dead grandmother's jewelry, but also factors in half of retail value for all the clothes and food he finds, like his current pair of sweet black and yellow DVS sneakers. Dumpster diving all year round, Diver says he also spends ten hours a week volunteering for the Christian charity organization where he lives.

And while the stock market has left our career prospects and 401Ks shaky, Diver says this is a good year for bottles and cans: "I say that I've been doin' this since I was 13 and this year I'm getting a raise."

 

Comments (9) RSS

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1
A recession is defined as two negative quarters of GDP.
Posted by D on October 6, 2008 at 1:28 PM · Report
2
D,
I actually spent an embarrassing amount of Sunday afternoon staring at government spreadsheets trying to figure out if we're actually heading into a depression (not recession) but everyone's just too afraid to say it. Despite my desperate afternoon with Excel, I couldn't figure out how much our GDP had dropped over past quarters and years. Do you know?! Where is this secret kept?
Posted by s.mirk on October 6, 2008 at 1:36 PM · Report
3
There have not been two negative quarters in a row, so we are ~technically~ not in a recession.
Posted by D on October 6, 2008 at 1:40 PM · Report
4
That is the newsmedia definition D, not the criteria that the NBER uses.
Posted by Smiley on October 6, 2008 at 4:51 PM · Report
5
OK here's more from NBER:

'A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough'

But there's no denying the media's been chanting we're already in a recession for the past year or so.
Posted by D on October 6, 2008 at 5:39 PM · Report
6
Man. Homeless people have it so good!
Posted by Tony Longshanks LeTigre on October 6, 2008 at 7:23 PM · Report
7
Well, Diver's got it pretty good, but many homeless don't have his skills. Rare is the diver that can make as much as this man does. And most of that money he's talking about is stuff that you can't live off of-- books, used clothes, costume jewelry, etc. And, of course, to make that 50 thou, he works hard. Perhaps he doesn't think of it as work, because he enjoys it so much, but he does the work as a full time job.

On the other hand, the rare find is so great. The other day I found 60 pounds of frozen boneless chicken breast in a dumpster, all wrapped up neatly in bags! Good diving days are a gem!
Posted by SteveK on October 7, 2008 at 10:00 AM · Report
8
Nowhere in Sarahs blog does it state that I am homeless.In fact,just the opposite.I'm interested in how you came to that conclusion?
Posted by Diver on October 7, 2008 at 10:33 AM · Report
9
Recession is one of the words that is being tossed around with increasing frequency. Due to recession, consumers and businesses are forced to get easy loans to relieve themselves from the stress brought by recession. But easy loans are not good enough with banks. Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, who has stated that a period of increased nationalized banking is probably in order to combat the recession. The banks have already gotten quite a bit in government easy loans anyway. He has said that the government needs to help absorb the toxic assets that the banks have taken on, and help them weather the storm. He also says that actions of this sort are cyclical in nature. Well, regardless of that, it still seems that we'd be playing serious favorites if we neglect to create more jobs and just give giant multinationals easy loans. http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/20…

Posted by AryanK on February 21, 2009 at 1:02 AM · Report

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