Dumpster Diver Uncovers $120,000 Worth Of Items Behind A UK Retail Store
The world of “dumpster diving” can be truly fascinating — and even a bit shocking — for revealing how much unnecessary waste we produce as individuals. But one UK man is currently going viral for exposing just how much retail stores are to blame in all of this after bringing home a very pricey haul of discarded items that he found behind a computer store.
In one clip obtained by Newsflare, a man named Martyn (who wishes to keep his last name private); films himself reaching down into garbage cans and unearthing everything from discarded iPhones to SSD cards to game drives.
With each new find, he gets more and more excited.
“Nice!” he says at one point. “Mega score!”
After finding a motorized children’s police bike, he marvels at how much something like this would cost in a store.
“Probably about 300 quid,” he guesses. (In US dollars, that is just about $370.)
There are lots of other fun kids’ toys inside the garbage, too — some of which are still in their packaging. During his search, Martyn finds a Robo Alive snake, a Roblox, Nerf gun and even an air hockey table that appears to be in working order. But there are also fun gadgets for adults, like a portable massager and a microwavable heating pad.
Martyn says the value of all the items he took with him came in at about £100,000 (or over $120,000 in USD.)
According to Newsflare, this is a familiar gig for the 47-year-old from Kent, England. Martyn describes himself as a full-time dumpster diver who started doing it in his spare time as a kid to support his family. But after realizing just how lucrative it could be, Martyn committed himself to it fully and now conducts regular searches of commercial garbage bins.
“It’s an incredible amount of money,” he told Newsflare. “I grew up in a struggling family when I was a child; one day, I found food in a Tesco dumpster, and it all started there.”
Not only does Martyn earn somewhere between £200 and £1,000 a week for his efforts, but he’s also made a name for himself through his popular YouTube series, “Retail Waste Exposed,” featured on the UK Dumpster Kings channel. He estimates that he spends about 12 hours a week searching for items and then devotes most of his time to fixing, repairing and re-selling as many items as he can. Moreover, he says he winds up donating about 90% of what he finds to either friends, family or independent charities.
Today, Martyn says his main goal is to expose the large amounts of retail waste that goes on under our noses — and it’s safe to say he’s doing a pretty good job of that.
“It’s criminal what they’re doing,” he told Newsflare. “I’d like the shops to do better. We’re all forced to do so much for the environment and blamed, but on a commercial level, they waste so much.”
Dumpster diving might seem like an odd activity to some, but it raises important issues about waste and sustainability. The amount of perfectly good items that are thrown away every day is staggering, and Martyn’s story shines a light on the wastefulness of large retailers. It’s important to remember that one person’s trash can be another person’s treasure, and perhaps we can all learn something from Martyn’s dedication to reusing and repurposing what others throw away.
