On Dumpster Diving Summary

What do you think of your living environment? Is it clean? Is it safe? Is it always having waste food? If it is, have you ever found any values in it, or just some trash, expired milk and decayed fruit? I have. When I was young, I had found many interesting toys in the nearby dumpster and always shared with my friends. We did a lot of experiments on toys.

Not only we have done this kind of things, but also some scavengers are doing. One of which is Lars Eighner. In the article On Dumpster Diving, Eighner describes the period when he was homeless and was being a scavenger. At first, he did not know the “Dumpster” at all. When he has experienced a lot, he found so wasteful people are. Eghtner assumed a plenty of methods that make the best use of the resources

whatever it was discarded because of bacterial or expired. Interestingly, there are three principles to distinguish the food safety. Eghtner also has stayed near pizza shop and observed student’s wasteful behavior because the majority of students don’t know how to store foods and some other reasons. In addition, Eghtner holds the view that the scavenger owns many values and happiness. During that period, Eghtner has collected many useful tools to earn his livings. He can found many stories from the dumpster either. Eighner thinks that experience is valuable. In my point of view, I definitely agree with Eighner’s environmental protective behavior. However, it exists many potential safety hazards as well.
First of all, we cannot deny that it brings many merits to us. “Dumpster Diving” can be very helpful for using limited resources especially the land. As Eighner mentioned, student’s always “throw food away around breaks because they do not know whether it has spoiled or will spoil before they return.” (p.57) When they throw, scavengers can reuse and will not cause unnecessary waste. Although I see the advantages, it’s not extremely helpful and sometimes may even more difficult to deal with.
As far as I am concerned, dumpster diving is more dangerous than what we can imagine.

I hope you can imagine a scene that a scavenger has eaten the poisoned food which contains transmissible viruses because he doesn’t have tools to heated or the viruses are not being wiped out because of some unknown reasons. Then he was sick. Suppose that he goes to store to buy food while you also stayed there for a while, which you may get infected at that time. Gradually, you also feel uncomfortable. Following the step one by one makes all people or animals sick. Can you image how horrible at that time? The world is gray. All the people are afraid of the disease like SARS.

Furthermore, there are more methods that we can use in our daily life to prevents the resources from wasting. We can “buy less use more”. Reducing the unnecessary expenses and always have cleaning plates campaigns and so on. Additionally, we should not only care about using resources but also the severe pollution. In the article Tune of the Tuna Fish, Sandra Steingraber depicts the image that mercury-poisoned tuna fish. If mercury really poisons the brain, it will be so terrible because various kinds of edible fish are poisoned by mercury in the

Ocean.
In conclusion, we should take more measures to make the best use of every resource. “Dumpster Diving” is a good approach but not good enough from safety’s perspective. We also can reduce the expenses in unnecessary objects and plant more trees to protect the environment. The government can establish the policies to prevent the industry pouring the industrial raw materials into river or ocean which leads to the severe environmental problem. As long as all human beings can determine to protect our Earth and take actions, Earth must be getting better and better, or all resources will run out after hundreds of years or even may be several decades! Are you willing to donate your power to construct a beautiful, clean world for yourself and your children’s future?