Driving for Garbage

[Jon Catterson]

I searched for a topic like this and couldn’t find anything but feel free to direct me to the appropriate post where this has been covered before.

My girlfriend and I were walking the dog in the morning when we encountered a garbage bin on the sidewalk (it was not garbage day) which is a pet peeve of my girlfriend. As she moved it back onto the street, I thought of something.

I imagine that for most vacant houses, the garbage, recycling, and green waste bins are not moved to the street once a week on the relevant pickup day. So the thought came that if I drove a neighborhood on its pickup day in the morning, I could pick out the vacant houses by looking for those homes that don’t have their bins out. These might be vacant houses where the owner keeps the outside looking decent and therefore don’t lend themselves as well to driving for dollars.

I went to my local county and city websites, and I could not find a map that showed when pickup

is done. However, I can enter any address into those sites to determine the pickup days. A couple strategic lookups enables me to determine the rough boundaries for pickup schedules. I work an 8-5 W-2 but I can wake up an hour earlier and drive through some neighborhoods on the morning of the pickup day that are relatively close. For other days, I can take time off or just get up earlier to cover them. A benefit to this method is it is easier and quicker to spot missing bins than examine a house in driving for dollars fashion, at least for me.

So for those that have “driven for garbage” before, what are the pitfalls to this method? Does anyone who has done it have any pointers I’m just missing? Thanks.