Dumpster Diving Ruckus Redux

and once again, rumor has it that it appears to be driven by a McMansion complex off Chena Pump Road, the developer of same having had the misfortune to fail to note the neighbor's business before he built his little neighborhood of big vinyl boxes. (Said neighbor runs a junkyard/recycling shop.) Charlie Rex, who has been behind this sort of thing before, is trying to make it illegal (or at least fineable) to dive in borough dumpsters, because this apparently has something to do with people piling stuff in their yards and selling it later. Or simply hoarding it. Maybe.

Hoarding is a serious mental problem, and when one's piles of stuff (or one's eighty-seven cats or four hundred dogs) start to stink or affect health and welfare of people and animals, THEN there's a real problem. But there seems to be no good way, legally, to deal with it before it gets out of control. (Perhaps I'm wrong on this--but hoarding as a symptom of a mental disease and sloppy storage of items on one's property are two different matters, and should be dealt with in different and appropriate ways.)

Rex also brings up the bogeyman of identity theft. I say, if you're concerned about people possibly pawing through your trash in a public dumpster (where you chose to toss that sensitive information), then maybe you should get a shredder and shred it first. Or perhaps a burn barrel, or a wood stove, and you can get a few BTUs out of it. People can steal your identity papers anywhere along the dumpster trail, and that includes the dump. So don't toss them in there in the first place! The News-Miner is right on in their editorial on this.

Rex wants people to rely exclusively on the transfer station recycle platforms, but not all transfer stations HAVE them.

The problem here is that people really really want to have access to recyclable and recycling goods, and aside from the transfer stations, they don't.