Many kids love to watch a trash picker and watch them go around the streets sorting through trash and picking out the good stuff from it.
Trash picking can actually be one of the quick ways to make money. Some of the pickings are really easy, as you don’t have to really dive into the dumpster.
You can do garbage picking or waste picking just for fun or you could even make a living out of it. But believe it or not, people have found astounding treasure in garbage, like a lottery ticket for a million dollars or a million dollar worth painting!!!
How and Where to Get Started as a Trash Picker
You need to have a strong stomach for garbage picking. That said, some places are excellent diving sites where you can pick up waste items. Someone’s trash could just be your treasure.
- Keep away from restaurants, as a thumb rule.
- Check out dumpsters near apartment complexes or near student dormitories to find unused items.
- Check out dumpsters near electronics stores or book stores.
- Dumpsters near hardware retailer stores could land you a lot of metal items that you can monetize.
- Check out trash by the curbside. You could find: rugs, furniture, a sofa, plumbing items, an old tricycle, you name it.
- Many communities have a fixed annual spring-cleaning day. Check out the garbage on these days.
Garbage Collection – Do Your Homework
Every locality has a specific day for garbage collection. In some cases, the garbage van comes over in the morning, whereas others do it in the evening. There are also several regulations for dumpster diving that you need to know about.
If you want to succeed in becoming a waste picker, keep an eye out for ‘For Sale’ signs in suburban locations. Check out houses where there is usually a bigger accumulation of garbage.
Prepare yourself before you go garbage picking. Wear long pants and shoes that have closed toes, for safety as well as hygiene purposes. Keep a knife for slashing open the trash bag. You could even keep a poker, a screwdriver, some pliers, multi-tools and so on.
Screening Techniques for Trash Picking
Learn to judge a trash pile based on what it looks like. For instance, if a bag of trash is saggy, it could be just useless household waste. If a bag is dusty, it could have some renovation material. Try lifting the litter or just feeling it to get to know the contents.
Avoid nasty smelling stuff while garbage keeping. Keep an eye out for needles and other sharp items. Check out these tips to have an awesome trash picking experience.
Create a Space When Picking Trash
You might need some space to hold the trash you collect in this business of litter removal. For instance, you could find a dining table or chairs discarded near the dumpster.
I know people who have found an entire bed frame, bar stools, television stands, coffee mugs in perfectly good condition. People living in luxury apartments seem to just toss out their valuable and awesome stuff!!!
Create a space in your home as you will need to carry the junk home and store it somewhere temporarily if you intend making money trash picking.
How to Make Money Picking and Selling Junk
Make extra money with trash picking. The best way to sell your garbage finds would be to list it on eBay, Craigslist or Etsy.
As far as pricing is concerned, you can check out the listings for current prices of similar items and lower it a little, while attempting to make cash for trash.
Instead of a fixed price, you could even just start an auction on eBay at a higher price and then tone it down according to the interest shown in the item.
Alternatively, just hold a yard sale or a bazaar sale of the trash to earn extra money, if it is easy to organize such events in your community. Check out blogs of people who have made money-selling trash finds to get more inspiration.
Trash Business – Make Quick Money
Get into the trash business as a way to make some extra cash. You could do garbage picking on a larger scale as well. Get a van or a truck and collect the best items you can find. But make sure to reach the garbage spot before the garbage trucks reach them. You can then sell them on different platforms.
Of course, you have to spend on gas and for the van while picking trash, so your profit margin could dip. But it’s still worth it. You could do it on a bike or just using a trailer or someone’s car.
Make Money with Scrap
Make trash day into another payday for yourself. If you find bottles or cans and so on, you could easily recycle them. There are many crafters who might pay you good money for metal scraps.
You don’t necessarily have to sell a big item like a used car for scrap metal. Even small bits of copper wiring or a door lock could fetch you a good amount, if there is sufficient amount of it.
Get On It
Of course, no one would leave his or her day job for garbage picking. But if you have always dreamed of finding buried treasure, trash picking could be just the right outlet for you to earn extra money. While cleaning up litter, you could find gold, silver, jewels, a priceless artifact, antiques; the sky’s the limit for trash pickers.
What could be better than a 100% margin for a product? Well, that’s exactly what you could be getting with a garbage find. Your product costs you absolutely nothing, except for the effort.
People are always throwing out good stuff. All you need is to salvage them and sell it to make a handsome amount of money.
In today’s touch economy, dumpster diving or trash picking could be a creative as well as adventurous way of making money, so why not? You could even be doing the planet a favor by reducing the negative impact of some goods on the earth.
Believe me, once you’re on, you’ll be hooked. The trash will lure you and you might find some amazing treasures.
