(no subject)

[pat]

On my friends-list is someone who left a Yahoo Group over a discussion about whether people taking cans from recycling bins is stealing.

I figured it would be really rude to discuss it in their journal since they clearly did not want to. However...

I've had this discussion with people before. Municipalities use the money they get from recycling aluminum and glass to help pay for recycling services. When people take aluminum cans from the bins they are taking money that would otherwise go to the city. (Cities get little or nothing from paper.) It is stealing -- albeit not from me, but from the city. Since I have an interest in the city continuing its recycling program, and in its not raising rates to do so, I am perfectly willing to yell at people to get the hell out of my bins.

Note: I am talking about curbside recycling bins that the city is required to pick up. I have no issue with people lifting cans out of sidewalk trash cans in front of stores, since those are handled by the merchants and not the city, and since as far as I can tell most merchants do not sift their trash for recyclables. Cans and bottles taken out of trash cans are removed from the waste stream heading for the landfill -- a good thing.

That said, I do exercise a fair amount of discretion in whom I yell at: the twenty-year old woman in nice jeans and shirt who was looting my bins and putting the cans in her car trunk? Her I'll talk to, and inform her that she is stealing, and generally put the fear of God into her so she leaves (I haven't seen her since).

The homeless guy on the bicycle? Not at all. I'll even smile at him. Maybe even say good morning.

There is stealing, and then there is survival.

The Impossible Dream (The Quest):Brian Stokes Mitchell:Man of La Mancha

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

Wow.

The only people I've ever seen stealing recyclables were people who presented as enough like the homeless people that I've worked with that I assumed that they were homeless. I've kinda seen them not only as working on their survival, but also, to a certain extent, stealing from someone who is falling down on their job to provide adequate services. It never occurred to me that there would be looters like the one you had.

[si-anenome.livejournal.com]

The comments went along the theme of "get a job". If someone had just stated the facts and/or offered up the S'vale number to call about recycling *theft*, I would not have had a problem.

[mysryael.livejournal.com]

a lot of groups also use recycling as both a means of teaching their members about renewable resources and fundraising.
I'm put in mind of the old newspaper bins that used to be made out of plywood and painted white, and that shopping centers used to place in their parking lots.

A lot of times I wondered if the people putting paper into the bins realized how much they were appreciated.

a homeless person is one thing, someone driving a car should go find a job.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Lots of good points, Pat.

I agree with you in principle... however, I'm not sure it's so easy to draw the line of who is truly in need based on appearances. (Kind of like how it's not a straightforward thing to differentiate who has a disability based on whether they are able to walk).

Granted, a scruffy man on a bike is likely to be in far more dire straits than a woman in nice clothes with a car. But... reversals of fortune have been known to happen. She might have the clothes and car from a time where she worked a good job, and now she has been laid off and is trying to make ends meet for her and her baby and her toddler. Perhaps by taking the cans to buy food or meet rent, she won't have to sell the car that she uses to drive to job interviews, to take her ailing spouse to the doctor, etc.

We also don't know that it's *her* car. She might have lost her own home and be borrowing couch space from a friend, and is borrowing the friend's car while the friend is at work so that she can gather the cans and at least cover her own food expenses while she's taking up space in her friend's living room. Pride gets curiously strong in times of need.

I'm inclined to think that anyone who is investing a substantial amount of time in gathering nickels this way... probably needs the money in some fashion or another. It's definitely a topic worthy of debate, as to where one draws the line in terms of what level of need justifies petty stealing, and I'd be interested in talking more on that question. (I'd almost be curious to see an LJ-poll on the topic...)

[missk.livejournal.com]

Money from recyclables can add up fast, that said, to make any sort of living at it, you need to dig in nasty trash cans and walk miles to collect enough cans/bottles. When I first noticed this happening when we moved into the Hayward house, I was annoyed. For all the reasons you mentioned above. Then one day I talked to an old guy who was doing his daily 'tour' of the neighborhood. He wasn't looting green bins, but was instead 'dumpster diving' for cans. He was working hard, and was willing to work harder. He asked if I would leave our recycling out for him, rather than putting it out for the city. I appreciated his initiative, but told him I didn't want to special effort to save it just for him. But said he was welcome to take what he could find on trash day. He spoke broken english and I wondered if he had difficulty finding "real" work. I was doing chores that day, and had a pile of trash bags as well as a bag of recycling. I gave him the recycling, and he took the trash as his thank you. I am sure he ended up tossing the trash in my neighbor's dumpster, but since I was going to have to put it in my car and go find somewhere to be rid of it, I was grateful.

I find I am less judgemental about those that take the cans/bottles. They work hard to get that stuff, and it takes a LOT of cans & bottles to make a decent living.

My current appartment building doesn't have recycling, so I was saving it myself. I took it to the recycler down the street at Albertsons. I had a medium (white) garbage bag full (uncrushed), mostly $.05ers - I got $3.30.

[mysryael.livejournal.com]

hmmm, interesting point. I don't look homeless either.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

All I can say is, you were not there. You did not interact with her.

On my street there must be forty recycling bins out on trash day, at least. You could clear them out in a couple of hours. If you got one dollar for materials from each can, which is not an unreasonable estimate, you could make forty dollars in a morning. If you didn't have to be at work until later in the day that's forty dollars every other week that you don't have to pay taxes on. And that's a very conservative estimate. You might well make three times that on my street alone. And that's just on my street -- I saw her later two streets over.

We have had crews of guys in trucks go through the neighborhood going through bins. I've seen them.

Gathering cans and bottles from trash bins is hard work with little payoff. Gathering cans and bottles from recycling bins, where they've been gathered together for you by the homeowner? Not so much.

And I could have called the cops on her, which is what the city wants people to do. (http://www.mountainview.ca.gov/city_hall/public_works/garbage_and_recycling/faqs.asp#788)

And yes, I do draw lines, and the more desperate someone appears the more likely I am to let it go. I don't have a problem with this. That said, if she had asked me when she saw me approaching her, and given the scenario you just suggested, I would have let her have the cans. She didn't. If her pride prevents her from asking for help, that's a shame, but that's also not my problem.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about digging in trash cans. The city-owned recycling bins are another matter: all the cans and bottles are on one side, paper on the other. Things that have had food in them are required to be rinsed out. You could go through our bins in just three or four minutes and get maybe thirty cans, at least.

It is lucrative enough that some weeks I've seen two-person crews of guys in pickup trucks raiding bins.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I've seen guys in pickup trucks systematically looting bins in our neighborhood.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I remember those paper drives! My church used to run them.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

All I can say is, you were not there. You did not interact with her.

*nods* True. Perhaps there was an "attitude" factor that made the reality of her situation more clear?

If you didn't have to be at work until later in the day that's forty dollars every other week that you don't have to pay taxes on. And that's a very conservative estimate. You might well make three times that on my street alone. And that's just on my street -- I saw her later two streets over.

So it's possible to make a lot of money pretty quickly by doing this, then... rather than a laborious effort for relatively few nickels. And, by that same token, a substantial amount taken from the city, rather than just "petty stealing."

Thanks for the added information...

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

thanks for providing the info on reporting scavenging.