I’ve been exploring my local areas by bicycle for as long as I can remember. In the mid ‘70s I was living in Edmonds, Washington, and took a ride about 8 miles north to the outskirts of Mukilteo, a town on the shore of Puget Sound with a little-used airfield on its eastern inland side. An industrial park had been established in the two-story white clapboard buildings that had been left behind by the Army Air Corps. JanSport occupied one of the larger buildings with its production facility and customer service was housed in a smaller one with unpainted cedar siding, which had turned almost black with age on its south-facing side. A large green dumpster was set right alongside the larger building; it was about 18′ long and 7′ high, so I had to climb the welded-on ladder rungs to see what was inside. What I found wasn’t at all garbage. All of the sewing scraps from the shop in the upper floor had been tossed through an open window. There were remnants of ripstop, coated nylon, Cordura, leather, webbing, zippers, cord—everything that went into the backpacks and dome tents that JanSport was making then. There were also rolls of new fabric still on cardboard tubes, thrown out because there wasn’t enough left to supply the pieces needed.I’d been raised by parents who lived by a credo that my sisters and I adopted: Don’t buy what you can make, make do with what you can find. I’d been sewing since I was 10 and in the dumpster I found everything I’d need to outfit myself for backpacking in grand style. I couldn’t carry anything home by bicycle, so I decided to return with my mother’s car to make a haul.
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What a great dumpster to find! I think we all have stories of useful resources that were our secret treasure troves, now long gone.
Hi Christopher,
Just thinking ,after reading your excellent piece: maybe we should make “Dumpster Diving” a compulsory subject in schools?
In our world of instant gratification and throw-away culture it’s well past time to teach our children a change of tack.
Lucky you to be encouraged to sew at an early age!
Chris,
I started reading about your Inside Passage sail/row and thought that was a great story about hearing from little Bergie many years later.
I’ve noted that in some marinas dumpster diving is a community effort. It often takes the form of a community exchange. Not all diving is good, though. One person’s garbage is another person’s trash.
My town dump here west of Boston had amazing discards from light industrial cast-offs. That was 45 years ago. Today half is now a recycling facility, the other half is a soccer field. I just rediscovered that fun from those days recently by searching a metal dumpster for “welding material.” Also scored was lawn mower, rototiller, and cement mixer—all working. I promised myself to always leave more than I take
My belief is in Re-purpose, Re-use, Re-upcycle before purchasing new.
We have a town recycling center or dump as well. Everything is priced right—Free. My scores have been big roll of outdoor carpeting, two oak tables (one 6′, on 8′, with leaves that looked new), two adding machines that I took apart, and $120 stuffed in the springs under some drawers.