“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”: Unveiling Hidden Gems through Dumpster Diving
and documenting it onTikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@torontotrashpanda
Quick note on the legality of dumpster diving in Canada: Trash is considered Public Domain in Canada. They cannot charge you with theft/shoplifting as it does not fall under “intent to deprive”. This said dumpster diving is not completely legal, its a grey area, and you can be charged with trespassing if you are on private property and the owner/business operator asks you to leave. Read more here
So I’m a long time dumpster diver living in Toronto, Ontario Canada. I’ve done this on and off since I was a teenager, I’m now a woman in my late 30s. I started off as a teenager in high school. I taught myself. It was survival back then. But once you see what’s in the trash you can never really convince yourself to pay again... At least I can’t! Even though I work a higher paying job I’m pretty much a standard cheapskate.
At that time in my life I was at the mercy of my mother who was chronically homeless. She ended up placing me and my younger brother in CAS care (CAS stands for Children’s Aid Society, its like Canada’s version of CPS) when she got evicted (we were on the street) from our apartment in Toronto. My mom was never a dumpster diver herself, she claims “its my daughter’s crazy free spirit that gives her these ideas”.
I quit for a brief time in my late teens/early 20s when I went to Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. I started back up again once I got my license and a car in my 3rd year of university. My most horrifying memory of dumpster diving during this period was finding live animals in the PJ’s Pets dumpster. More specifically I was finding live beardies (Bearded Dragons) in their dumpsters. This was back in 2007-ish so unfortunately I do not have any photos/videos. PJ’s Pets no longer exists (they went out of business).
Oh and yes I’ve read about/seen the videos on Petsmart dumpsters and people finding live animals in there. To the best of my knowledge this isn’t happening in Canada. I’ve checked Petsmart dumpsters here. Nothing too exciting except I get a lot of pet toys and they slash some bags of foods (although I notice they don’t slash bags of returned foods or food for small animals).
Documenting my recent dives on social media
I recently decided that I wanted to document some of my dumpsterdiving experiences. I started about 2 years ago just posting photos on facebook even though I’ve been a dumpster diver for many years. I mainly wanted to account for my spots. I posted to several groups, but I ended up quitting those groups mainly because of disagreements I had with how those groups are run.
“Onwards and upwards”: Moving on from facebook groups, I decided to join Tiktok!
Like many millennials I first joined Tiktok at the beginning of the pandemic. We had “stay at home” orders from our government and for me this meant a lot of time at home bored out of my mind. Yes I was/am employed, but the pandemic meant working at home and 0 socializing. Admittedly I’ve always been a loner/introvert but during the pandemic the lines between work time/home time really became blurred.
I had heard about Tiktok on the news and was skeptical about the claim that the Chinese government was using it to spy on us. I initially joined just to do a sniff of the app and some #appsec #hacker stuff to prove that the servers were indeed in North America and that people were getting worked up over nothing! I posted about my sniffs of the app here on my first account.
In the meantime between time I had become a fan of many dumpster divers on tiktok. Some of my favourite accounts: dumpsterdiveking, glamourddive, loveinthedumpster, salty.stella, grab.it.fast
I started to realize that there was a bit of a trend with these accounts: ALL of them were US based. This is a popular genre and comparable to another extreme cheapskate genre: coupons. Yes extreme couponing techniques are on Tiktok and are a viral trend. And not just old episodes of that TLC show, lots of people are making new content. While coupons do exist in Canada, unfortunately in they have always been sorta lame. You certainly won’t see any Canadians walking out of the grocery store with over $900 of groceries that they only paid $10 for. Dumpsterdiving on the other hand is a possibility. BUT there were not any Canadian accounts that I knew of. I wanted to see Canadian content of this genre. I was growing tired of only seeing Americans making these videos. Some people would even comment on American videos saying things like “I wish we had dumpsters here in Canada”. I wanted to show them otherwise! Plus I started thinking this information may be useful to other people in Canada. I wanted people to understand that this is possible in Canada and that Toronto has great dumpsters.
So I decided to create a cute name for myself that was iconic to Toronto: TorontoTrashPanda
Raccoons are the animal of Toronto. Much like NYC is known for rats, Toronto is known for it’s own “pests”- raccoons. I say “pests” as they are considered one and can be dangerous (much more so then rats: mainly for rabies and distemper) and VERY destructive, but often they are found doing funny things. They are kinda the mascot of Toronto. Toronto has always had a special relationship with raccoons. For those of you who don’t know: Toronto Named The ‘Raccoon Capital Of The World’
I started posting videos on dumpster diving in July 2023. Since then my account has grown steadily and several of my videos have over 150k views.
My total view count since I started making dumpster diving videos is around 2 Million!
Recommendations for Dumpster Diving
- Be discreet. It’s generally best to go at night. 10pm or later. Best days are Monday-Thursday. Clean up after yourself. Don’t leave a mess.
- If you want to avoid getting yelled at/caught by store staff see rule #1. It’s very unlikely that you would get charged with trespassing as police would take HOURS to show up (they have other more pressing priorities IMO) and the owner has to give you a formal first notice in that case.
- There is no needed equipment but here are a few handy things to have: A trash grabber, puncture proof gloves, a step ladder.
- Wear gloves Most commercial dumpsters are relatively safe and I’ve never encountered used needles, but I have seen glass!
- Avoid residential and thrift store dumpsters. Yes these are good spots for things like furniture, but IMO you are risking bed bugs and encountering rats. I personally would never judge you for taking furniture from these dumpsters, but I would warn you of the health risks. Be very cautious with used items in general, as a dumpster diver in the USA claims she got “hand foot and mouth” rash from dumpster diving in a thrift shop dumpster.
- Avoid Restaurant dumpsters. They are nasty and filled with half eaten food. Not safe. Rats too.
Some Pics of My Recent Finds
