What is dumpster diving or skip hunting and when is it a problem?

Dumpster diving is when your skip of waste or stored materials is raided without your consent.

The phrase ‘dumpster diving’ was first used in the US in the 1980s. In the UK, skip hunting or skip diving are more widely used terms.

Skip hunting has become more popular due to a challenging UK economy. People either can’t afford to buy new items or they would rather upcycle discarded products than pay full price. Upcycling has become particularly popular in recent years and has made people more curious about what treasures may be found in someone’s skip.

It may seem like a harmless act for someone to take waste you were throwing out, but it could be illegal. It depends largely on where the skip is located and whether its contents were actually intended as waste to be thrown away.

1st Choice Concrete & Skip Hire supplies skips to Merseyside households and businesses. Skip diving is a topic that we are often asked about. Let’s take a closer look at whether it is legal for someone to take items from your skip.

The legal guidelines for taking waste from a skip

• There is no official UK law that specifically prohibits skip hunting
• If your skip is on your private or business property, a skip hunter will be trespassing which is illegal and can be a civil or criminal offence
• If your skip is located in a public place, such as on the road outside your building, it is legal for anyone to take items from that skip
• If you placed items into the skip to store them there temporarily, people may not be entitled to take them. This can be a grey area that applies to situations where you have put items into a skip that you may decide to keep.

When a skip is in a public space, ideally a skip diver should ask your consent to take any items, but this can’t be relied upon.

Someone going through your skip can result in rubbish being left around it, which is not only unsightly but also a potential health and safety issue.

How to prevent skip hunting

To deter skip hunters from rooting through your skip, you may want to consider hiring a lockable skip. You can also put a notice on the skip, or cover it with a tarpaulin, until you know what you want to do with the waste. This would also protect the waste from the weather.

What about unwanted dumping of other people’s waste in your skip?

How about the opposite problem when someone dumps their own waste in your skip? Again, etiquette would dictate that they should simply ask for your consent. You may be fine with them putting waste in your skip because you know you won’t fill it and you’d rather it was disposed of properly.

Skip dumping can, however, be a problem, not least because there are some hazardous materials that cannot be put in skips. The amount of waste being dumped may also mean that it takes up space that you need for your own waste.

If you want to avoid having someone else’s waste dumped in your skip you may want to:

• Put a sign on the skip stating that once you have filled it as far as you need, you will allow others to put their waste in it
• Cover it with tarpaulin to make access more difficult
• Position the skip in view of a CCTV camera, and put a ‘no dumping: CCTV in operation’ notice on it.

For skip hire in Merseyside get in touch with 1st Choice Concrete & Skip Hire

If you need a skip for your Merseyside home or business, get in touch with 1st Choice.