10 Jul Garbage Collectors Share The Most Insane Things That Were Ever Thrown Away

Western society has a real problem when it comes to garbage. Although it’s painful to admit, the nature of our mass-consumerism driven society means that we have a real bad habit of throwing away perfectly useful things. Our oceans are becoming filled with litter, and landfill sites are overflowing with trash. No thought is given to repair or maintenance, and we’d rather think were out of sight an out of mind.

You know what they say right? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and nobody knowns this axiom better than garbage men. The people that haul our trash and do their best to dispose of it know exactly what kind of stuff is getting carelessly thrown away. This week, an Askreddit thread asked garbage men what some of their most interesting finds were, and the answers were pretty damn mind-blowing.

1. Nazi knives

“Not me, but my Dad was garbage man. He found his share of cool stuff. he worked from 1969-1989 for the DSNY. I still have a lamp made from an old brass fire extinguisher that he found, like many others, he found lots of TV’s, some new clothes (usually at Christmas time – that is why we always went through the wrapping paper), baseball cards by the box, wish I kept those, some WWII stuff, most notably an SS Dagger – but one of the wings of the eagle was broken and attached with scotch tape. Stamps, cause I collected them when I was a kid. I have a Hitler postage stamp somewhere from this.”

2. Bedazzling beetles 

“One of the floors in the building had a huge problem with bugs. One night I was collecting the trash off the floor when I noticed she had very carefully decorated a cardboard box to look like a hotel, and had a sign inviting people to drop any bugs they found inside. It was weird, but I figured she was just collecting proof of the bug problem to get management to do something about it.”

3. Gulf war photos 

“This was in the early nineties. I was emptying the public trash cans in a city centre in mid England. I saw this really expensive bound leather photograph holder book. I took it and lobbed it in the cab to check out later. After work I started looking through it and it started with these fresh faced young soldiers laughing and grinning at the camera. They were doing their training I think in some leafy camp in England. Then it switched to an awful looking desert – it was the time of Gulf War I.”

“The smiles went and then the carnage came. Busted tanks, cars and people. Fires, death and destruction. Almost unrecognisable burnt corpses. Just horrible, horrible stuff. Then I stopped looking and threw it away as the owner had intended. I often wonder who threw that away, I hope it was the soldier trying to forget rather than one of his grieving relatives. That was more than 20 years ago but I think of that poor boy a lot.”

4. Meth lab materials 

“I work in the office of a company that collects garbage. I got a call from a customer and she stated that every time they bring their bin back up from the street, something on it burns their skin. I called the operations manager who went out to check it out with the environmental officer. Turns out the next door neighbour had a meth lab and was disposing of toxic chemicals in his bin and there was some transfer.”

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