Owner's trash bins are 'fair game' for scavengers
Putting your trash cans out on garbage pickup day almost always leaves the discarded items open to a variety of prying eyes.
Q. Two men in a beat-up old truck drive down our street in the early morning hours of trash pickup day every week, rummaging through each homeowner's trash bins to look for stuff that can be salvaged. This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because I don't want people to see what I'm throwing out, whether it's personal correspondence, empty prescription bottles or other items. The police say the two men aren't doing anything illegal because someone who puts his or her trash out for collection on a public street has "no expectation of privacy." Is this true, or are the cops just too lazy to care?
A. The police are correct. Anytime you put your trash out for collection, everything in the bin is open to prying eyes - whether they belong to salvagers, law-enforcement agencies or simply a nosy neighbor who wants to learn more about your private life.
This concept was cemented by a landmark case, California v. Greenwood, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. Billy Greenwood was arrested after police found some drug paraphernalia in his trash can and then proceeded to get a warrant to search his home. Inside, they found even more.
Greenwood argued that his eventual conviction should be tossed out because the warrantless search of his garbage violated his Fourth Amendment right to protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." But the court rejected that argument, noting that Greenwood had voluntarily placed his trash in a highly trafficked area where it could easily be viewed by anyone, whether a garbage collector, scavengers, schoolchildren, neighbors or - in this case - law-enforcement officials.
The court upheld Greenwood's conviction, thereby making it "open season" on anything that homeowners and renters might toss away in the future.
Though there's nothing you can legally do to stop people from snooping through the cans or bins you put out on a public street on garbage pickup day, there are a few steps you can take to ensure at least some level of privacy. One is to use a paper shredder to destroy sensitive documents, whether it's old love letters, bank statements or certain types of receipts. Labels on empty prescription bottles can be soaked off and shredded, too.
Also, keep your bins as close to your home as you can, and try to put them out as late as possible on pickup day. Though you can't stop folks from rummaging through your trash once it's on the curb or parkway of a public street, it's illegal for them to trespass on your private property to get a glimpse of the stuff you're throwing away.
Q. My wife and I recycle everything that we can. She says it's OK to put broken glass in the recycle bin, but I have been told that it is not. Who is right?
A. You are. Though glass jars and bottles that are intact are recyclable, broken glass should never be put in a recyclables bin. The shards can injure the workers who pick up or sort your recyclables, and also can contaminate the other items in the bin by working their way into the fibers of, say, clean cardboard boxes or reusable rope.
Experts say the best way to dispose of broken glass is to seal it in a box or wrap it in several sheets of newspaper and then dump it in your regular trash bin.
Q. We appreciated your recent column about the recalls that Big Lots and HomeGoods launched for some of their indoor "hanging chairs" due to potential tip-overs. We bought one of those chairs two months ago but never got a recall notice, so we promptly took it back after reading your column and got a full refund of the $400 we paid. Would it be possible to keep your readers up-to-date on other recalls of home-related items on a regular basis?
A. A number of other readers have made similar requests, so I'll begin including such recall notices on a semiregular basis - starting today.
Two major recalls were announced in late June. The first involves about 24,000 Worx brand leaf blowers and vacuums, distributed by Positec Tool Corp. and sold through Wal-Mart and Menards stores between January and May of this year for about $40. The grounded and ungrounded wiring in some of the WG507 models could be reversed, causing a shock hazard to users.
Owners should stop using the blowers immediately and contact Positec, (866) 955-4579, www.worx.com, to get details about a full refund or replacement.
A bigger recall involves several models of more than 110,000 "Top Fin" plastic aquarium heaters, sold nationwide by the PetSmart chain between August 2014 and April 2015 for $25 to $40. Again, a wiring problem could result in a shock to the user, and at least one homeowner suffered property damage after the heater caught fire.
Owners can find out if they have one of the defective heaters by contacting PetSmart, (888) 839-9638, www.petsmart. com. Those who do can return it to their local store for a full refund.
Real estate trivia: About 75 percent of the waste that Americans produce is recyclable, the Environmental Protection Agency says, but we recycle only about one-third of it.
• For the booklet "Straight Talk About Living Trusts," send $4 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to David Myers/Trust, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-4405.
© 2015, Cowles Syndicate Inc.