Once read the city code where I live during an unrelated dispute with solid waste services and found out dumpster diving is illegal. Check your local laws!

What about the bed bug epidemic?
Don't ever drag in stuff from the trash for your house!

Some laws are really stupid and unecological. How can it be legal to throw perfectly working things and destroy valuable material, but illegal to take care of stuff others consider garbage?

Some people don't want you going through their private trash. You should respect that. It is not for you to impose your particular beliefs on others, just as you probably recoil at the though of some religious doing that to you concerning faith, right? "Dumpster Diving" is TRASH DIGGING and yes, it is illegal. Where do you think most info on you is found and abused, including your SS#? Encourage others to be ecologiacally aware... don't rip their stuff off... they want it to go to the city, not you. That's selfish of you.

It depends where the trash is, if it is on private property then it is illegal in most places, however if it is on public propertly, like on the street, ready to be picked up then it is on public property and allowed for anyone to go through, how do you think the police are allowed to do this for when investigating people.

If you have personal or sensitive information that is important to you and you don't want other people to see it, then don't through it in the trash as it is, dispose of it properly.

Personally, im not very intrested in peoples personal stuff and intimate information....the ones that are, always find ways to get hands on it.
But furniture, fabrics, wood, utensils etc etc. should only be personal as long as you can make use of them.
I think its criminal considering stuff like that so personal that you have to dispose them for garbage (and depending on where you live most probably burning or other kind of destroying) rather then returning them to the flow.
The material used, the effort to create it, all wasted. Just for the sake of privacy?

That is the dark side of consumerism.
I like to consume, but i don´t like the waste mentality.

In Philadelphia it's extremely popular for people to leave their furniture on the side of the curb hoping someone will take it. We're becoming a huge recycling city and it's better for someone to stop while driving by than to see it go to the landfill. I have myself, as well as many friends have found great pieces of furniture on the curb.