You’re right. That looks more like a trash can. I had just assumed that the dumpster was somewhere behind them and not on the video.
Something like that wouldn’t take long to fill up.
that’s the law almost verbatim il la county ca and a lot of places have cameras posted because usually, the dumpsters are in a small brick off square with a gate … funny thing is around here usually if ya ask they don’t mind as long as ya not obnoxious about it
If I may introduce an obvious distinction no one has stated overtly, but is probably understood- there is a difference between city dumpsters serviced by city employees and commercial dumpsters used by businesses.
No one except the business is allowed to dump into a commercial dumpster ever. The business is responsible for the contents of what is dumped-- and some contracts require the trash to be bagged so throwing your soda cup, burger wrapper, and some cold french fries directly in the dumpster violates the “it must be bagged” agreement. There are plenty of trash receptacles in retail businesses- use them!
By-the-way, many municipalities also require that trash be bagged (so it does not drop around the dumpster or blow out of the truck at highway speeds). Most cities charge all residential customers the same amount for trash services and the city OWNS the dumpsters. If you are a resident of the city and you pay your bill- you may dump household TRASH in any dumpster. You MAY NOT dump any construction debris, tree trimmings, or hazardous material in any dumpster.
In my neighborhood for example, everyone treats their dumpster as if they own it- bought and paid for; they do not. But you want people who bag their dogs poop to drop it into a can or dumpster rather than leave it on the street or not bag it up at all. (We have one guy who diligently bags his dogs droppings and leaves it wherever it originates because he doesn’t want to carry it to a receptacle – and so far none of us have trained our dogs to poop exclusively near the station where the receptacle and the bags are provided near the park entrance.)
In a case where a shut-in became a hoarder and never used their trash for ten or twenty years, then died-- throwing all of the crap that has accumulated will fill up many dumpsters. They are essentially using their entire backlog of payments [and non-use] in one week when their house is emptied. What they still cannot dump is construction material from any repairs or remodels.
Which leads to roll-off dumpsters. Construction debris is more expensive because it may contain lead based paint, asbestos, and various other dangerous substances. Re-modelers and re-roofers must use a roll off dumpster which does not go to a landfill without inspections first. There are also significant efforts to recycle and reuse many, many building materials. In addition, those who trim or remove trees need to remove all clippings out of the area, none of these items are household trash and do not belong in dumpsters of any stripe. In this local area palm fronds were often dumped in alleyways or dumpsters but now everyone is quite diligent about reporting them. Many cities have drop off sites where bio-green material is turned into mulch (or fertilizer if it has enough nitrogen) and recycled in that manner.
In pedantic summary-
- Never dump into a commercial dumpster unless you are the business owner who holds the contract. Period.
- If you are a resident and pay for solid waste removal, all city dumpsters are for your use. (Please don’t be a jerk about it or abuse the privilege and place only bagged household trash in any dumpster.)
- If you or your contractor are creating construction debris hire a roll off dumpster and negotiate who will pay for it before any work begins or payments are made.
- You may place your own plant trimmings out no more than a week (or so) before bulk pick-up is scheduled for your area.
- Never place anything else in your or anyone else’s alleyway including but not limited to: Furnishing or bedding, trees cacti or portions thereof, plumbing fixtures, construction debris, paint cans, automobile parts, fluids in any form of container, etc.
For both residential and commercially contracted dumpsters, unlicensed contractors dumping potentially toxic, but always bulky construction debris is the primary reason for all the no dumping laws. Armature arborists are the secondary cause (actually professional but unlicensed tree trimmers). Here alleyways are also dumping areas for these kinds of illegal dumps but it is being combated by residents and municipalities and it is mostly successful these days. Of course DIY homeowners are often learning through fines from the city that debris removal is part of the job the city is not going to pay for under any circumstances. (They give you a certain amount of time to correct it yourself-- then they have a crew remove it and send you the bill.)
I forgot to mention above that in many newer retail spaces there is more than one dumpster per business. There is usually a landfill dumpster and often a recycling (or sometimes just cardboard recycling) dumpster which might be smaller (or might not). I am not sure if local zoning is behind this, or chain businesses wanting to be (or appear to be) green friendly, but it is quite common in especially pad buildings and businesses in newer construction – say the last ten or twelve years. Never saw it before then, but rarely do not see it since then.
These newer dumpster locations are almost always locked, gated affairs with block walls on three sides and a stout gate that is usually locked.
It is not zoning, but just good business. There is a higher charge to haul landfill dumpster. And the Recycle dumpster can be at a lower cost, no charge, or the building may be paid for what is hauled away.
We have very little, if any trouble, with people tossing things like mattresses, bicycles, and old furniture in the alley.
At the recycling center (right behind my office) there is a place for people to leave the items there. It’s not at all unusual for people to stop in the alley, check out what is there, and load it up and take it home. Anything that someone else doesn’t pick up, is loaded into the trash truck and hauled to the dump.
It’s surprising how much of the furniture is nearly brand new. One day about a year ago someone was cleaning out the house of a woman I knew who had passed away and was getting ready to unload a sofa that she had bought maybe a month or two before she died. It’s the newest (in real terms) piece of furniture in my office.
One very cold winter night a few years ago, I was on top of the roof of the office (we have a flat roof) trying to break up the ice so that the trapped slush could drain. While I was up there, I could hear what sounded like gunshots about once a minute the entire time coming from all directions. I couldn’t figure out what that was.
The next morning I found out that the sound of gunshots was made by limbs breaking off of trees. I doubt that there was any tree in town that wasn’t damaged. The city got the word out to everyone in town to just pile the tree limbs up by the street. It took the city employees a few days to pick them all up and haul them to the field by the sewer pond to be piled up. In comparison, it took several nearby towns weeks to clear up the damage in their towns.
Usually, though, people take the limbs out to the field by the sewer pond themselves and drop them off. If the gate is locked, they just have to call a city employee to be let in. They also have special dumpsters (painted green and marked appropriately) for things like grass clippings and other vegetative matter including small limbs which they load into the trash truck and haul to the field to be dumped out. There is generally one or two of these dumpsters per block.
They also have some shelves under an awning for books. If you have books to throw away, you can drop them off there. Other people will come by and look to see if there are any books they would like to read.
One day the director of utilities mentioned that someone dropped off some yearbooks from the late 1940s and early 1950s. I had a good idea who they had belonged to (he had died a few weeks earlier) so I went and got them and kept them at the office. Several months later when we were sitting around drinking beer at the back of the office with the man’s kids, I went and got the books for them. They were quite happy to see them and took them home with them.
Some of the help the city employees do is quite surprising. I needed to anchor something on the roof last Thursday (Dec 23) so I went over to the city shop to pick through the cinder blocks in a pile by the dog pound to place on it to keep it from moving around in the high winds that we expected on Christmas Eve. I brought 8 cinder blocks back to the office and carried two up to the roof. After that, I felt like I needed linament. About 9 pm, the director of city utilities and my younger brother carried the other six up to the roof for me. (One of them turned out to be a concrete block and felt like it was twice as heavy as the others.)
Currently, the only things my town recycles are cardboard, tires, paper, and motor oil.
They were recycling plastic jugs and electronic equipment, but whoever was taking that doesn’t take it any more. Most people drop off the plastic jugs and electronic equipment but the city just treats them the same as garbage from the dumpsters.
The law of respect for other people’s property.
How many people own their own dumpsters?
How many people own their own cars? Someone leasing a dumpster has the same exclusive right to the use of that dumpster as you would have to a car you are leasing. Or would you have no problem with someone keying your car, seeing that you don’t own it?
I put a lock on the dumpster I rented when unknown people started filling up my dumpster with yard debris, leaving me no room for my own trash. Solved the problem for me. The scumbags would just dump their stuff on the side of a road – until they got caught and charged with felony dumping – 5 years in prison in Florida.
Ok, so maybe the dumpster is not their property - but having it is a service they pay for. Are you legally permitted to plug your electric weedwhacker into my outdoor outlet if you have a long enough cord?
Surely you must have a website for whatever department in your town charges people for the dumpster service? And I’m sure that website says essentially “You can pay us X per month for a dumpster that everybody who doesn’t want to pay for trash removal is legally permitted to use without even asking your permission”. It makes perfect sense for the town to want fewer dumpsters if it’s more efficient to collect the trash that way rather than from each individual house - what doesn’t make sense is for the town to charge only six houses on the block for trash collection while the other twelve get it for free. And if that’s the case, and you haven’t gotten something mixed up ( like all 18 houses split the price of the six dumpsters , or the city doesn’t actually charge for for the dumpsters) it has to be written somewhere.
You aren’t stealing the dumpster. You are stealing the service that someone else is paying for. If someone is paying for their trash to be hauled and you make them pay for hauling yours then its theft of services. If you come and steal the actual dumpster they it would be theft with the owner of the dumpster as the victim.
Of course this can be reduced to absurdity. No one is getting arrest for throwing in a McDonalds bag as they walk by. These cases come up when someone dumps all their household garbage in someone’s dumpster or a contractor sneaks in all their debris after a job.
Maybe not dumpster, but until very recently, trash collection in St. Paul was not a municipal service–there were private trash hauling companies, and one would set up trash service with any number of them. You could provide your trash can, or the company would supply one to you as a lease. The charges were based on volume.
I had my own can for years, but the company we contracted with bought some new equipment and it was easier to standardize so they provided a can.
I didn’t appreciate people dumping their trash in my can, as I had to pay for “extra trash,” but it was better than people just dumping it in the alley or the street.
And yes, people dump mattresses, furniture, bed frames and other bulky items in the alley or on my property. I’m on the corner, so it’s probably worse. The boulevard is technically the city’s property, but they hold me responsible for it. Some jackass dumped a fiberglass pickup topper there once. The city’s attitude is that if it’s on your property, it’s your problem, but if you call the city non-emergency number and say someone dumped something they will usually pick it up.
What would convince you that it definitely is illegal?
Someone is footing the bill for that dumpster. If you have their permission to put your trash in it, all’s well; if you don’t, you’re committing theft of services.
Another common form [of theft of services] is using another entity’s dumpster without their permission, as this creates an expense to the party paying for the service.
“Open to the public and unlocked” doesn’t matter. There are often dumpsters left unguarded and uncovered at construction sites, but you’re still not allowed to walk up and put your trash in them unless you have permission from whomever has paid for the use of that dumpster.
Exactly. If you leave your car unlocked with the windows down, that doesn’t make it ok to steal it.
Or throw your trash in it.
I’m not reading all 70+ posts to this thread, so I’ll address this. At my store, we occasionally have people toss stuff in our dumpster. A couple of cans or some fast food or a dirty diaper isn’t a big deal and not who those signs are targeting. The problem is when I get to work in the morning and find that my dumpster, which was just emptied, has been entirely filled overnight. Often times it’s furniture (presumably from someone moving out of a nearby apartment). Where I pay $200 a month to have it emptied, an emergency call to get it emptied today, might cost $200-$300 on it’s own.
If a landscaper fills it with yard waste, I might get stuck having to empty it by hand and hiring someone to haul it to a dump that accepts it.
What it comes down to is that if you go behind my building and fill my dumpster, I can’t use it until it gets emptied (and a business like mine can’t not have a dumpster). There’s no reason why I should have to pay so that you can get rid of your stuff.
But, just to be clear, we’re not talking about some trash in your car or a gum wrapper. We’re talking about someone making the dumpster unusable to me.
Think about it like this, if you’re trying to get rid of something that, for whatever reason, you don’t want or can’t put it in your own garbage, don’t make it my problem.
ETA, also, if you feel the need to wait until 2 in the morning to do this, you know you’re doing something wrong. The same for scrappers I catch stealing stuff. If they really believed their excuse, that it was just garbage, free for the taking, they wouldn’t be doing it in the middle of the night.
While I was out walking my dogs in the greenspace behind my business, I had someone pull up to our dumpster with a pickup and start unloading bags of trash into it.
I asked them which business they were with, and they said it was none of mine. I took a picture of their truck and license plate and sent it in to building management. Apparently, they got a big ass fine, part of which went back to the building management, and I got a discount on my next month’s CAM.
At work a guy who lives next door likes to watch what’s going on. Twice he has seen someone dumping stuff into my dumpster. Both times he took pictures and I filed a police report. The charge is “Theft of Services”. The first time the “perp” came back and emptied my dumpster into his car, which the cop suggested as a way for him not getting a $$$ticket. The second guy claimed some other guy did it. He received a citation and eventually paid it.
The cop gave me material about victim’s services that explained the support the state provided for people like me.