Dumpster Diving - Legal Status

Legal Status

Since dumpsters are usually located on private premises, divers may occasionally get in trouble for trespassing while dumpster diving, though the law is enforced with varying degrees of rigor. Dumpster diving per se is often legal when not specifically prohibited by law. Abandonment of property is another principle of law that applies to recovering materials via dumpster diving.

Police searches of dumpsters as well as similar methods are also generally not considered violations; evidence seized in this way has been permitted in many criminal trials. The doctrine is not as well established in regards to civil litigation.

Companies run by private investigators specializing in dumpster diving have emerged as a result of the need for discreet, undetected retrieval of documents and evidence for civil and criminal trials. Private investigators have also written books on "P.I. technique" in which dumpster diving or its equivalent "wastebasket recovery" figures prominently.

• In the United States, the 1988 California v. Greenwood case in the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is no common law expectation of privacy for discarded materials. There are, however, limits to what can legally be taken from a company's refuse. In a 1983 Minnesota case involving the theft of customer lists from a garbage can, Tennant Company v. Advance Machine Company (355 N.W.2d 720), the owner of the discarded information was awarded $500,000 in damages.
• Dumpster diving in England and Wales may qualify as theft within the Theft Act 1968 or as common-law theft in Scotland, though there is very little enforcement in practice.
• In Italy, a law issued in 2000 declared dumpster diving to be legal.
• In Germany, a dumpster's contents are regarded as the property of the dumpster's owner. Therefore, taking items from a dumpster is viewed as theft. Be that as it may, the police will routinely disregard the illegality of dumpster diving seeing as the items found are generally of low value. There has only been one known instance where divers were to be prosecuted: the thieves were arrested on assumed burglary as they had surmounted a supermarket's fence which was then followed by a theft complaint by the owner.
• In Canada, The Trespass to Property Act - legislation dating back to the British North America Act of 1867 - grants property owners and security guards the power to ban anyone from their premises, for any reason, permanently. This is done by issuing a notice to the intruder, who will only be breaking the law upon return. A recent case in Canada, which involved a police officer who retrieved a discarded weapon from a trash receptacle as evidence, created some controversy. The Judge ruled the policeman's actions as legal although there was no warrant present, which led some to speculate the event as validation for any Canadian citizen to raid garbage disposals.
• In 2009, a Belgian dumpster diver and eco-activist nicknamed Ollie was detained for a month for dumpster diving accused of theft and burglary. On February 25th, 2009, Ollie was arrested for taking food from a dumpster at an AD Delhaize market in Bruges. His trial evoked protests in Belgium against restrictions from taking discarded food items.