And lots of copper tubing no doubt.
2 Likes
For those interested, this has been featured on Boing Boing at least twice before, in 2016 and in 2017.
Also, there are several more videos, including New China TV, CNN Business and Guardian Culture.
2 Likes
I was a garbage man in my early twenties and was always disappointed to see people throwing out old books. But their trash was a bookish introvert’s treasure! And though I’ve had to cut my collection down over the years, I still own many of the books I dug out of the trash.
3 Likes
Sounds cool wish I could watch.
Not sure if Firefox or my algo vpn is the issue
Content so nice Pesco will post it thrice is the unofficial motto here 
just some good natured ribbing, 
ya
2 Likes
This has raised a lot of issues in my mind. It is neat to see all that stuff that is salvaged but then some of that like old tamagotchis really is junk. I wonder what his own house looks like! Watching it makes me think that I wish people would be more diligent about recycling and donating to thrift stores. I also think a lot of this would be better served if he did give it to thrift stores - he talked about not having a lot as a kid and there are all these toys that a lot of kids would love to have.
1 Like
STILL NO SHAME!
Yes, automated BB asshole grammar checker, it is.
If I heard right, I think he does say in the video that he cleans the items before he puts them on display. Also, I got the impression that he doesn’t necessarily keep everything that he brings back to the building.
(And I’d bet that a building like that—especially one housing the city’s Sanitation Department—would probably get regular visits from a pest-control service anyway, i.e., whether he had the display there or not. Just guessing on that, though.)
But to your point, a friend of mine did once get bedbugs from some used clothes she bought at a yard sale and stashed in her closet at home without first washing them. Cleanliness is definitely important!
Yes, and not just recycling and reusing, but not producing/buying so much stuff in the first place. The recycling mantra is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and it seems to me the order of the words is really important.
That display in the video is kind of stomach-turning to me in the sense that there’s so many of each thing—and that’s just a small sampling of all the trash that’s thrown out! It seems so easy to ignore our consumption and trash-producing habits when our refuse trickles out of our homes a little bit each week and is picked up and whisked away, out of our sight. When there are sanitation-workers’ strikes and we see photos of a city with trash piled high on the curbs, it’s a wonder that we don’t die of shock.
Regarding books, it’s a little bit of a blind spot, like many other things. If you don’t have room to keep it and can’t transport it to a donation facility, even if it’s in perfect condition, it may well end up at the dump.
OTOH, if it’s falling apart, moldy, bug-ridden, badly out of date, it doesn’t matter that it’s a book, it’s past its use-by date.
1 Like
So a $450 teddy bear and a $100 Lena Horne signed biography are just two of the items. I’d bet there are at least $100,000 USD worth of items in that collection. Great video.
Baltimore trash collector ‘Roc’ (Played by Charles S Dutton) called such finds “perks” of the job.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
