Private and Proprietary Garbage

One of the biggest problems I've encountered in Nelson that hasn't come up in the other places I scavenge for art materials is that the trash is not very accessible, and if it is (on the curb during garbage day), people are rather anti-scavenge. Far more than two thirds of the commercial dumpsters in town are locked. The jeweler even has an ornate silver lock on his trash bin. For such an artsy, semi-rural area, there is no garbage scavenging culture. And because people pay for their garbage by the bag and those bags sit directly in front of their single-dwelling houses, the connection between an individual and his or her garbage remains identifiable in a way that doesn't happen in New York City or the Yukon. At least that's how I've theorized the discomfort and even hostility I've encountered when I've asked to look at people's trash, even when I flash my artist-not-homeless credentials.

A point in case: I've been getting my best garbage from SHARE, a second hand store that advocates ecological sustainability. They unlock their dumpster for me, and I root through all of the discarded donations. This picture is what I got yesterday morning; there were many, many plastic Christmas wreaths. If you don't want to be wasteful, don't buy non-biodegradable seasonal decorations!
But when I went to another second hand store (which shall remain unnamed-- Nelson has at least five), even though the woman kept telling me how they tried to keep everything out of the waste stream, and how they were patrons of the arts, I could not go through their dumpster. When I pushed a bit, she said it was because the dumpster hadn't had enough for a full load, so her husband brought a truck full of their household garbage-- so there were kitchen scraps. I told her that kitchen scraps didn't bother me, and they would be in bags, which I rarely open, but she still didn;t budge. Then, realizing that she had told me that she had done something mildly illegal-- getting her institution to pay for her domestic garbage, which is a real problem in Nelson and the reason there are locks on all the dumpsters-- she became sickly sweet and let me go through the office trash, but not before she pointed out which bags of office trash I couldn't open. Then she waved a broom at me and said "you've been a bad wascilly wabbit," Elmer Fudd style, and left me alone.

Other up-scale stores, such as the jewelers and the fancy kitchenware store, claim they have no garbage of interest and will not unlock their dumpsters for me to verify this.

The stores are pretty much my best bet for garbage; I don't want to cause the obvious discomfort that curb-side recycling engenders, and getting trash before it actually hits the waste stream always results in higher quality trash in better quantities. But except for SHARE, the Hat Factory, and Pheonix Computers, it has been an uphill battle. Nelson is a garbage desert, even though it has plenty of trash.