It’s council hard rubbish collection morning this morning. All weekend piles of refuse have been appearing on nature strips, huge numbers of unwanted fridges, lawn mower and even the odd elliptical trainer have parked themselves waiting for the truck.
Lying in bed last night we heard a truck pull up and begin idling. Okay, a little odd at 10:00pm. Then there was the banging and thumping so I hopped up to investigate. It was a bloke, complete with fluro safety top, lugging Joseph’s old fridge on to the back of an already bulging truck. He finally finished this and added Ange’s lawn mower before pulling around to load up our neighbours lawn mower as well.
This is when she came running out and yelled “what the hell are you doing?”.
Now here’s the question that kept Rae and I chatting away. Did he have the right to go and help himself to other peoples junk, presumably to make a profit on further down the track.
Is he a civic minded, recycler of unwanted goods or a thieving parasite making money and not sharing the proceeds with the owners of what he took?
What do you think? And bonus points if you can guess which one of us was on which side of the argument.
I don’t have a problem with it. Blokes being naturally lazy are quite happy to see someone else doing some work and if they can make a buck, good luck to them. Sorry to disagree with Rae?
It makes me quite happy to see someone lugging away another person’s rubbish. If it’s only going to end up in landfill somewhere I’d rather some motivated person come and take the rubbish and repair it to make a bit of money.
And if I don’t have the motivation or the skills to fix a broken lawn mower or washing machine then I say help yourself and do with it what you will.
Yeah, assuming it was going to landfill if the council got it, that bloke’s just shaved some money off your rates by cutting the amount of junk to be carted away. As long as the scavengers don’t leave a mess, of course.
Peter says, good on him – there’s a man with initiative, but I wonder if the Council picked up what was left?
Why would you care who picks it up if you’re throwing it out anyway? I usually put things on freecycle first anyway (though our group is not terribly active), then when I put them out on the footpath I try to keep them in usuable condition (if they were in that condition in the first place) in the hope someone might pick them up before they get junked.
Much better to be re-used, than thrown away and if someone with more energy than me makes money from it, then good on them!
Technically it’s against the law to scavenge but I have no probs with someone hauling away something they can use/recycle/resell to make a buck, etc, if I’d classed it as rubbish in the first place (have helped scavengers load stuff on their trucks in the past).
I think Rae agreed with the scavenger and you didn’t.
I have to say it annoys me greatly when the trash pickers go through my trash. We dutifully seperate the recyclables so the city can make some money on them, and be green, and someone else comes alongs and benefits personally from my dilligence. Here there is no planned pick-ups for old appliances and the like. But if you put one out someone will come and throw it in the back of a pick up before your front door is closed. I am always amazed that our city does not try to put a stop to it, as they are losing revenue. And, I think Rae would agree with me.
What really irks me is that council says it’s thieving, yet I KNOW that they take perfectly useable goods from the tip and resell them. So who is right? The neighbourhood collector who has a use for the stuff or the council who are more subversive about it? According to police, rubbish is considered public property once you disgard your junk. More power to the collector, I think. Just err, do it during daylight hours rather than thumping through stuff at 10pm.
Well, if he’s not going to lift the lid on this, I will. I sided with the bloke taking it to fix it up and resell. Good on him I say. I’m a freecycler and believe the less we pitch into landfill the better. If he can spend a few bucks fixing it up, whether it be a fridge, or exercise equipment or whatever, to make a few bucks selling it, then good for him.
The only thing I don’t agree on is it going in the dead of night. There are certain things that belong in landfill/garbage, eg baby car seats that have been in accidents or whatever. The stuff on the nature strip ready for the tip generally has a reason for being there. Be sensible and ask the chucker outerers why (for certain items) because some things cannot be used. But if it can be salvaged and reused, I vote got for it!! The less disposable we are, the better the world is.
Yeah I agree with you Rae. I do know that in some areas various programs have been established so people with disabilitys do get involved in recycling the communitys TREASURE. (Garbage as some ill minded people see it). However there is an ever growing population which equals more TREASURE than there is programs. I am all for the bloke or lady who recycles from the nature strip or wherever (at a decent hour). I often drive around different areas of our local public bushland and have found some interesting items, some worth money, some just interesting and some very old. In short, if people are to lazy or don’t have the time to dispose of items themselves and place them in the public eye on a nature strip or if they are just plain mongrels who take a shorter, cheaper drive to the bush to dump their TREASURE, then I say GO FOR IT!!!!!!!!!!!