Is your garbage yours once you take it to the street?

[sonofabeach]

Whether or not the person taking the trash will make a mess seems to be the main issue.
A while back my brother was griping about a guy that asked him if he could go through his trash. One of the things my brother was throwing out was a plastic bin that was full of loose trash.
My brother said he later came outside to find that the man had dumped the container full of trash on the grass and took it.

[nutmeg]

I love "recycling" We always set the stuff someone might want apart so no one needs to go through the trash to get it.

I've done a bit of dumpster diving in my time. Well, actually curb pick up.
Someone threw away these really cool shutters in my neighborhood. I picked them up and we use them at our shop to hang earrings on.

The front window at our shop is decorated with an old bike that we found in the trash and painted pink.

We don't have problems with people messing with the trash...but the crows do. They know the schedule and show up in your neighborhood on your trash day. They rip open all the bags and strew stuff all over...

[Lundah]

my trash is in the alley behind the house, usually every few days there's someone digging thru all the the trash digging out cans and whatnot. Last time I checked, they're paying around 50 cents a pound for aluminum cans, so I guess I can't blame folks for digging up what they can. But it does bug me a bit that these people are just helping themselves to my trash when I'm paying taxes and fees for the city to pick it up.

[The Lost Manatee]

I know that legally speaking that once you put your trash can out on the curb you have no legal expectation of privacy and thus others can go through your garbage without worrying about you taking them to court.

We have a spring clean up every year that the city sponsors and I have piled all sorts of old items out there only to have them disappear before the pick up date. I guess one man's trash is really someone else's treasure.