The other night I took our dog Iko out for his late evening walk. Earlier I’d brought the trash and recycling bins out to the curb for morning pick-up. As I came down the driveway I noticed a middle-aged man in a leather jacket and sporty cap holding his cell phone flashlight and going through envelopes, letters, and papers from our recycling bin. When I approached, he turned and walked away. Iko and I headed in the opposite direction.
I was puzzled for a second, but then it dawned on me that he was looking for correspondence containing personal information, whether for identity theft or some other nefarious purpose. While I very rarely do so, I was sufficiently annoyed that I went to our “NextDoor” neighborhood website when I got home and recounted the incident. I titled my message “Recycling Thief”. It read, “‘Tonight there was a middle-aged man rummaging through our recycling bin. I assume he was looking for credit card information or the like. I mention this to remind people to be careful of putting items in their recycling that might have personal information.”
My post was apparently provocative, garnering 144 comments in the first 48 hours. Perhaps this is a record for Next-door, at least for our neighborhood. Five of the responses agreed with my account and thanked me for sharing my tip. The other 139 couldn’t seem to decide if I were an idiot or a heartless wretch. The vast majority pointed out that I was totally mistaken in my interpretation and that this was simply a person who was collecting aluminum cans to resell for a few pennies apiece, a commonplace and harmless activity. I’m not sure why 75 or 80 people had to make the same point, but everybody wanted to get their two cents in. One NextDoor member said that I’d written “the paranoid post of the day”. Some reported knowing the man — “a kindly old gentleman.” Many added that the man was probably a homeless person. Aluminum can proceeds would help him find shelter in this freezing weather or get something to eat, with the added implication that I was a heartless wretch. One person said if I couldn’t tolerate someone collecting aluminum cans I’d discarded, perhaps I should think about contributing to a homeless shelter.
The vast majority, of course, rejected my label of a “recycling thief”. Many said that going through people’s recycling and trash containers is completely legitimate and legal. Once trash is put at curbside, they said, it is in the public domain and open to anyone. Several respondents proudly disclosed that they are “dumpster divers” themselves. A few better-informed readers cited a Cincinnati ordinance which defined removal of items from trash and recycling bins as illegal. But even when people were aware of the law, they said that it is rarely enforced, and one should simply assume that strangers will go through one’s trash.
I had thought of my post as a public service announcement, reminding people to be careful about their recyclables, but hardly anybody seemed to take it this way. Several commented that only “idiots” would put valuable personal information in their recycling bin, and many gently explained to me that I should buy a shredder and shred my personal documents. (Actually we have a shredder but we haven’t used it since it got filled up several years ago.) One person conjectured that I seem to be the sort of person who puts valuable personal stuff in my recycling bin. Another said that if I am putting credit card information info in the recycling bin, I deserve to have it stolen.
Aside from acquiring a community reputation as a nitwit, I’m not losing too much sleep over my online experience. Most of the replies were not hostile, presumably because people simply thought me naive or stupid. And this sort of collective outcry happens all the time on our NextDoor website. Actually the hoopla was largely my own fault. If, instead of saying the man was “rummaging through our recycling bin, I’d said something like “going through envelopes and letters”, a lot of confusion would have been avoided. Having been burned once, I’m ambivalent about posting anything on our Next-door website in the future. There is always the risk of being verbally molested by a horde of strangers. On the other hand, perhaps I could say something that would repair my miserable public persona.
Love,
Dave
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