Curb mining is the act of salvaging appliances, electronics, furniture and art discarded on the street ("curbside"). In cities around the world, people often dispose of furniture and other unwanted items by leaving them on the sidewalk for others to take.
Curb mining is the act of salvaging appliances, electronics, furniture and art discarded on the street ("curbside"). In cities around the world, people often dispose of furniture and other unwanted items by leaving them on the sidewalk for others to take. [1]
Terms similar to curb mining include "dumpster diving" and "freeganism". In June 2007, The New York Times wrote: [2]
"Freegans" are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly-bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants. They dress in castoff clothes and furnish their homes with items found on the street.
— Steven Kurutz, [2]
In many jurisdictions, ownership of domestic waste changes once it is placed into a container for collection. It is thus illegal (although rarely enforced) to skip dive. Curb mining gets round this because the items offered are not yet placed (in a legal sense) into the "waste" stream, thus their ownership has not yet been transferred. It is often legal to curb mine, but illegal to skip dive.
Some countries—notably Germany, Japan, and much of Western mainland Europe—have a long tradition that items placed outside are intended specifically for re-use by others. There may be a designated day of the week or month, distinct from normal refuse collections, to encourage this.
The urban phenomenon of curb mining has been used by various companies for experimental marketing. The strategy is to create awareness of a product by handing it out for free. [3] In 2009, advertising agency Mono and modern furniture designer Blu Dot created an experiment to see what would happen if they left 25 Blu Dot chairs on the street for "curb miners" to find. They attached GPS devices to the chairs, which were activated once the chairs were picked up and taken. [4] The chairs were then tracked back to the new owners' homes where a handful of them were interviewed for a documentary. [5]
Dumpster diving is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners but deemed useful to the picker. It is not confined to dumpsters and skips specifically and may cover standard household waste containers, curb sides, landfills or small dumps.
A sidewalk, pavement, footpath in Australia, India, New Zealand and Ireland, or footway, is a path along the side of a street, highway, terminals. Usually constructed of concrete, pavers, brick, stone, or asphalt, it is designed for pedestrians. A sidewalk is normally higher than the roadway, and separated from it by a kerb. There may also be a planted strip between the sidewalk and the roadway and between the roadway and the adjacent land.
Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually referred to as black goods due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered black goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type.
Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process and waste-related laws, technologies, economic mechanisms.
Street furniture is a collective term for objects and pieces of equipment installed along streets and roads for various purposes. It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traffic signs, bus stops, tram stops, taxi stands, public lavatories, fountains, watering troughs, memorials, public sculptures, and waste receptacles.
Trash may refer to:
The Maytag Corporation is an American home and commercial appliance company owned by Whirlpool Corporation since April 2006.
Litter consists of waste products that have been discarded incorrectly, without consent, at an unsuitable location. Litter can also be used as a verb; to litter means to drop and leave objects, often man-made, such as aluminum cans, paper cups, food wrappers, cardboard boxes or plastic bottles on the ground, and leave them there indefinitely or for other people to dispose of as opposed to disposing of them correctly.
Used goods mean any item of personal property offered for sale not as new, including metals in any form except coins that are legal tender, but excluding books, magazines, and postage stamps.
Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd., or Muji is a Japanese retail company which sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods. Muji's design philosophy is minimalist, and it places an emphasis on recycling, reducing production and packaging waste, and a no-logo or "no-brand" policy. The name Muji is derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryōhin, translated as No-Brand Quality Goods on Muji's European website.
Illegal dumping, also called fly dumping or fly tipping (UK), is the dumping of waste illegally instead of using an authorized method such as curbside collection or using an authorized rubbish dump. It is the illegal deposit of any waste onto land, including waste dumped or tipped on a site with no license to accept waste. The United States Environmental Protection Agency developed a “profile” of the typical illegal dumper. Characteristics of offenders include local residents, construction and landscaping contractors, waste removers, scrap yard operators, and automobile and tire repair shops.
Electronic waste recycling, electronics recycling ore-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics; when referring to specific types of e-waste, the terms like computer recycling or mobile phone recyclingmay be used. Like other waste streams, re-use, donation and repair are common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste.
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'
The throw-away society is a generalised description of human social concept strongly influenced by consumerism, whereby the society tends to use items once only, from disposable packaging, and consumer products are not designed for reuse or lifetime use. The term describes a critical view of overconsumption and excessive production of short-lived or disposable items over durable goods that can be repaired, but at its origins, it was viewed as a positive attribute.
Paley Park is a pocket park located at 3 East 53rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on the former site of the Stork Club. Designed by the landscape architectural firm of Zion Breen Richardson Associates, it opened May 23, 1967. Paley Park is often cited as one of the finest urban spaces in the United States.
The following is a list of terms specific to anarchists. Anarchism is a political and social movement which advocates voluntary association in opposition to authoritarianism and hierarchy.
Waste are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste product may become a by-product, joint product or resource through an invention that raises a waste product's value above zero.
New York City's waste management system is a refuse removal system primarily run by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). The department maintains the waste collection infrastructure and hires public and private contractors who remove the city's waste. This waste, created by New York City's population of more than eight million, can amount to more than ten thousand tons a day.
In New York City from the 1930s to 1978, before citywide Pooper-scooper laws were enacted, street signs were put in place informing and encouraging citizens to "curb their dog." The phrase meant that it was acceptable and desirable to allow/have your dog defecate in the edge of the street, near the curb and in "the gutter," rather than on the sidewalk.
