Corm
New Member
In the US, they call it dumpster diving. That translates to skip diving over here. It’s the physical expression of a disagreement over the definition of the word ‘rubbish’. On the streets of our towns and cities, a thriving community of scavengers is either making a killing, saving the environment, stealing, playing Robin Hood or having a laugh, depending on your point of view…Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
You would think that John O’Loughlin would never want to see another skip. Last year, a mate of his who was working as a security guard in a south Dublin business park rang him up with a major tip-off. There was a skip full of computer gear sitting outside the offices of a major hardware manufacturing multinational across the campus. John was there in five minutes. The police were there in ten. “I heard loads of sirens – there’s a big road going up beside the park – you hear ambulances going up and down all the time, so I thought nothing of it and continued packing stuff into the car, but then one cop car came screeching along and pulled in front of my car and two guys jumped out. Then two other guys ran around from the other side of the building. They had actually parked in the front. And another was running from the centre of the building, with handcuffs and a baton in hand. I was staring at them running towards me, going ‘Ah lads. Come on. It’s a skip.’”
Skip it may have been, but it was on the property of the company in question. Their security guard had seen some malcontent rooting through company garbage and hit the panic button. Three hours later, John walked free of the police station. The company, slightly embarrassed by the security person’s failure to deal what was a fairly harmless situation had decided not to prosecute. Back in the business park, John’s car was still full of salvaged hardware. Hmmmm, said John. He was tired. It had been a long day. He got into the car and drove off.
Among the haul were servers, computers and an LCD projector lacking only a bulb (“I don’t know how they didn’t figure that out.”). Over the years, he’s rescued laptops, desktop computers, countless monitors, TV’s and overhead projectors. If they weren’t working perfectly, which many have been, they can usually be made to work without either serious expense or effort.
Computers and computer parts also make up the lion’s share of Brendan Geoghegan’s hoard. “I came across a skip one time. Admittedly they were fairly old laptops but still laptops – they had black and white screens and Windows 3.1, so they were very old, but they had all their transformers and everything. There were eight of them altogether, and there was also one decent one that had Windows 95.” Evidencing a streak of philanthropy that runs through skip diving, Brendan passed all eight onto an uncle who lectures in a north Dublin college and all are still being put to good use in a student lab. Further finds have allowed him to sort out four friends with a desktop each and he’s even managed to send a couple of machines out to the former soviet republic of Belarus. Not the most high spec machines in the world, but perfect if all you want is Word, Excel and web browsing. “Somebody told me once that they put a man on the moon with a sixty-four bit computer so these things, even though most people would laugh at them after a few years, they’re still very powerful.” He’s also found modems, zip drives, printers, network hubs, servers, shrink-wrapped, never-been-opened software, complete with all enabling license numbers. TV’s, stereos, all kinds of furniture, CD’s…The list is endless.
Talk to any skip diver for more than five minutes however and you’ll find that the justifiable glee at scoring so much free stuff is a thin veneer over a great reservoir of disgust, horror even. Brendan Geoghegan mentions a skip-diving friend who also found some unopened software. “He took it home and looked up the price of it and it was some work edition of some Microsoft package and it was worth something like €10,000. The user codes were there and everything. Crazy.” Waste. Without it consumer capitalism couldn’t exist. Once the new model comes out, the old becomes suddenly distasteful. “Monitors,” says John O’Loughlin, “that’s a huge thing. Computer monitors, twenty-one inches, all working perfectly, they just throw them out because TFT, those thin ones are coming in at the moment, so everyone figures, oh they must be better and they take up less room when actually they’re not as good quality as some of these older monitors.” Moreover, it used to be the case that when something broke, you fixed it. But cheap parts and even cheaper labour from beyond the EU means you can get all kinds of things for a fraction of what they used to cost, with the consequence that the second hand market for old TVs, stereos and white goods isn’t up to much any more.
None of this stuff is supposed to be going to landfill in the first place of course. Impending European legislation, not to mention our current waste management crisis has prompted a ban on all waste electrical and electronic goods entering local authority dumps. So how is it getting in? “People don’t give a toss about the recycling legislation,” says Michael Woodburn, another skip-diver. “They just throw the stuff into the skip and let the waste removal people worry about that. It’s gross.” So then, are waste management companies turning a blind eye to the contents of their skips? Or is the ban simply not being implemented? Andrew O’Donovan, sales and marketing manager of waste disposal company, Ipodec hints at the truth. “I’ll put it this way. Landfills are refusing to take in this stuff, so unless somebody is bringing it in concealed or whatever…” He states that Ipodec are scrupulous in their interpretation of the rules and that the company goes to some lengths to explain to customers what can and can’t go in.
In the absence of a properly regulated waste management regime, skip divers are in effect operating a valuable public service. Reusing, recycling and reducing the volume of material destined to end up in landfill. To conclude that they do it out of the goodness of their hearts is not however to tell the full story.
John O’Loughlin rebuilds computers from his skip finds and offloads them through Buy and Sell. Because he’s put the machines together himself, he’s even able to offer an after-sales service. “You pay quarter of the price as you would for a new one and they’re just the same.” What Brendan Geoghegan can’t use or give away, he sells through the internet auction site, eBay; also a valuable resource for picking up components missing from skip finds. Years of rooting in the trash has inured both of them to the hostile curiosity of security guards, passers by and those who’ve hired the skip in the first place. “The reluctance goes when you find something cool,” says John, “when you realise what you’re doing is highly lucrative.”
Some people will always remain unreceptive to the idea of course. Brendan Geoghegan says he stumbled across a major clean out in a solicitor’s office on Dublin’s salubrious Merrion Square last month. “I knew from the kind of stuff that was going into the skip – network cards and loads of cables and laptop batteries that hadn’t used – I knew there would be PC’s in there later on.” His approach has always been upfront, so he asked the woman co-ordinating the effort if they’d be getting rid of PC’s. Clearly unhappy with the enquiry and what obviously lay behind it, she grudgingly admitted that there would be. Brendan knows from experience that going away and coming back later would mean leaving the loot to someone else, so he decided to wait. “Because they had a skip I guess, they were bringing out other stuff that had there, old coffee making machines and your one got the coffee filter and poured it directly over this smashing printer that was at the bottom of the skip. I was waiting two doors down just sitting on the steps of this Georgian house, and she could see me.”
Given the potential rewards, it’s likely that skip diving will survive the opposition of bitter oul biddies and over zealous security guards. It certainly looks as if the culture of waste, on which it relies, is making it through the economic downturn unscathed.
You would think that John O’Loughlin would never want to see another skip. Last year, a mate of his who was working as a security guard in a south Dublin business park rang him up with a major tip-off. There was a skip full of computer gear sitting outside the offices of a major hardware manufacturing multinational across the campus. John was there in five minutes. The police were there in ten. “I heard loads of sirens – there’s a big road going up beside the park – you hear ambulances going up and down all the time, so I thought nothing of it and continued packing stuff into the car, but then one cop car came screeching along and pulled in front of my car and two guys jumped out. Then two other guys ran around from the other side of the building. They had actually parked in the front. And another was running from the centre of the building, with handcuffs and a baton in hand. I was staring at them running towards me, going ‘Ah lads. Come on. It’s a skip.’”
Skip it may have been, but it was on the property of the company in question. Their security guard had seen some malcontent rooting through company garbage and hit the panic button. Three hours later, John walked free of the police station. The company, slightly embarrassed by the security person’s failure to deal what was a fairly harmless situation had decided not to prosecute. Back in the business park, John’s car was still full of salvaged hardware. Hmmmm, said John. He was tired. It had been a long day. He got into the car and drove off.
Among the haul were servers, computers and an LCD projector lacking only a bulb (“I don’t know how they didn’t figure that out.”). Over the years, he’s rescued laptops, desktop computers, countless monitors, TV’s and overhead projectors. If they weren’t working perfectly, which many have been, they can usually be made to work without either serious expense or effort.
Computers and computer parts also make up the lion’s share of Brendan Geoghegan’s hoard. “I came across a skip one time. Admittedly they were fairly old laptops but still laptops – they had black and white screens and Windows 3.1, so they were very old, but they had all their transformers and everything. There were eight of them altogether, and there was also one decent one that had Windows 95.” Evidencing a streak of philanthropy that runs through skip diving, Brendan passed all eight onto an uncle who lectures in a north Dublin college and all are still being put to good use in a student lab. Further finds have allowed him to sort out four friends with a desktop each and he’s even managed to send a couple of machines out to the former soviet republic of Belarus. Not the most high spec machines in the world, but perfect if all you want is Word, Excel and web browsing. “Somebody told me once that they put a man on the moon with a sixty-four bit computer so these things, even though most people would laugh at them after a few years, they’re still very powerful.” He’s also found modems, zip drives, printers, network hubs, servers, shrink-wrapped, never-been-opened software, complete with all enabling license numbers. TV’s, stereos, all kinds of furniture, CD’s…The list is endless.
Talk to any skip diver for more than five minutes however and you’ll find that the justifiable glee at scoring so much free stuff is a thin veneer over a great reservoir of disgust, horror even. Brendan Geoghegan mentions a skip-diving friend who also found some unopened software. “He took it home and looked up the price of it and it was some work edition of some Microsoft package and it was worth something like €10,000. The user codes were there and everything. Crazy.” Waste. Without it consumer capitalism couldn’t exist. Once the new model comes out, the old becomes suddenly distasteful. “Monitors,” says John O’Loughlin, “that’s a huge thing. Computer monitors, twenty-one inches, all working perfectly, they just throw them out because TFT, those thin ones are coming in at the moment, so everyone figures, oh they must be better and they take up less room when actually they’re not as good quality as some of these older monitors.” Moreover, it used to be the case that when something broke, you fixed it. But cheap parts and even cheaper labour from beyond the EU means you can get all kinds of things for a fraction of what they used to cost, with the consequence that the second hand market for old TVs, stereos and white goods isn’t up to much any more.
None of this stuff is supposed to be going to landfill in the first place of course. Impending European legislation, not to mention our current waste management crisis has prompted a ban on all waste electrical and electronic goods entering local authority dumps. So how is it getting in? “People don’t give a toss about the recycling legislation,” says Michael Woodburn, another skip-diver. “They just throw the stuff into the skip and let the waste removal people worry about that. It’s gross.” So then, are waste management companies turning a blind eye to the contents of their skips? Or is the ban simply not being implemented? Andrew O’Donovan, sales and marketing manager of waste disposal company, Ipodec hints at the truth. “I’ll put it this way. Landfills are refusing to take in this stuff, so unless somebody is bringing it in concealed or whatever…” He states that Ipodec are scrupulous in their interpretation of the rules and that the company goes to some lengths to explain to customers what can and can’t go in.
In the absence of a properly regulated waste management regime, skip divers are in effect operating a valuable public service. Reusing, recycling and reducing the volume of material destined to end up in landfill. To conclude that they do it out of the goodness of their hearts is not however to tell the full story.
John O’Loughlin rebuilds computers from his skip finds and offloads them through Buy and Sell. Because he’s put the machines together himself, he’s even able to offer an after-sales service. “You pay quarter of the price as you would for a new one and they’re just the same.” What Brendan Geoghegan can’t use or give away, he sells through the internet auction site, eBay; also a valuable resource for picking up components missing from skip finds. Years of rooting in the trash has inured both of them to the hostile curiosity of security guards, passers by and those who’ve hired the skip in the first place. “The reluctance goes when you find something cool,” says John, “when you realise what you’re doing is highly lucrative.”
Some people will always remain unreceptive to the idea of course. Brendan Geoghegan says he stumbled across a major clean out in a solicitor’s office on Dublin’s salubrious Merrion Square last month. “I knew from the kind of stuff that was going into the skip – network cards and loads of cables and laptop batteries that hadn’t used – I knew there would be PC’s in there later on.” His approach has always been upfront, so he asked the woman co-ordinating the effort if they’d be getting rid of PC’s. Clearly unhappy with the enquiry and what obviously lay behind it, she grudgingly admitted that there would be. Brendan knows from experience that going away and coming back later would mean leaving the loot to someone else, so he decided to wait. “Because they had a skip I guess, they were bringing out other stuff that had there, old coffee making machines and your one got the coffee filter and poured it directly over this smashing printer that was at the bottom of the skip. I was waiting two doors down just sitting on the steps of this Georgian house, and she could see me.”
Given the potential rewards, it’s likely that skip diving will survive the opposition of bitter oul biddies and over zealous security guards. It certainly looks as if the culture of waste, on which it relies, is making it through the economic downturn unscathed.
