Landfill workers: What's the most interesting thing you've seen dumped at the landfill, and have you kept anything that was worth keeping?

My mum was a cleaner in the offices of a refuse station. The guy who had to watch the monitors for the crushing room somehow found coins and cash and all kinds of neat things. He saw a box move a little weird (on a 25+y.o. technology b&w screen) and found a dumped kitten. Mum brought her home and she was my first, just for me, pet. She lived a long, loving life. Bless the eagle-eyed tiny-monitor man.
— whatareyoueating

I used to do some errands for a local businessman who owned a metal recycling and car scrapyard. He would regularly get people drop off cars, collect cash and walk away. The types of people who didn't want their cars back in circulation, if you get my drift. No dead bodies or anything like that, but cars that have been used for dodgy stuff or have no insurance/tax/MOT etc and they just want rid. Fairly often we would be required to do a "dust down" of the car, which meant donning overalls, gloves and eye goggles and getting inside and looking for anything that might cause a fire in the car crusher, so deodorant cans, lighters, fuel, paper and faulty electronics etc. Whatever we found inside, we got to keep I found: - Pristine box set of Star Trek Deep Space Nine - Near mint condition Squire Stratocaster with a case, lead and spare strings (Still got it today) - 30 piece swiss army knife - Bowie knife - Old cassettes from various 90s bands (Texas, Lighthouse family etc) - Bags of casino chips - Wedding rings & other jewellery We made a killing off of that trade before I left the area for University. Wouldn't recommend the work tbf, back breaking and dangerous, no benefits, no insurance, no pay, just got to keep whatever you found. Got the occasional cash in hand for a big job
— airwalkerdnbmusic

I used to drive a garbage truck, and found tons of interesting things, but in the spirit of the question, I found two things in the landfill that I kept. One was a 20-foot section of heavy towing chain. It probably weighed 40 pounds, but only had a hook on one end. Took it home, put a second book in it, still use it to drag logs and how vehicles. The other was a white ceramic elephant, about 10" tall. It was in the cover fill, the dirt that is pushed over the trash at the end of the day to keep it from blowing away and to hide it from scavengers . I was waiting to unload my truck, looked out the window and there it was. The remarkable thing was, this elephant had been put in the trash, thrown in the truck, had the compactor run on it who knows how many times, dumped out of the truck, and run over by a bulldozer multip!e times, yet was completely undamaged. It was packed into the cover fill, so it wasn't just dropped there. Took him home, washed him off, and named him Lucky. I was going to donate him to Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum, but not long after my visit there the Museum had a big fire. Lucky might have been destroyed. (Still Lucky!)
— Phantom_Scarecrow

My city has bulky item collection once a year. Basically, it's a time where you can throw away just about anything you can haul to the curb. I was running in my neighborhood on the weekend before bulky item collection, and found an old oak card catalog from a library. Ran home, got my car, went back and picked it up. After cleaning, I now use it to hold spices in my kitchen. Bonus is that it's the perfect height for a work surface!
— wstreefrog

Kinda related. My friend worked in the recycling department of his college for a couple years while taking classes, he would regularly find stuff worth keeping. Most noteworthy was a film canister stuffed with a couple hundred dollars in cash. More regularly he'd get nice water bottles, portable speakers, keyboards, etc. Apparently it was pretty common that when students were moving and cleaning out their dorm they'd just throw random stuff in the trash and recycling, then he and his coworkers would have to sort the stuff and could keep whatever valuables they wanted. Gross job, but the benefits were actually pretty nice. It paid well and was well connected in the community, so once he graduated his boss gave him a recommendation at the city parks department and he immediately landed a great job.
— Honest_Remark

Went to the dump. Dropping off random junk.. couple things were metal so we pull up to the scrap pile. Two matching mountain bikes in near perfect condition just sitting there. I'm an avid cyclist they were some fairly expensive bikes. Asked the guy working there if I could grab them he said 10$ each.. Load em in the truck.. 2x 1200$ mountain bikes for 20$ cleaned them up, tires were slighly waŕped not a problem for me I have the tool/understanding to do it.. Sold them for 500$ each...
— Asylumsix

My friend's dad worked at a dump. He used to bring back perfectly working retro consoles for them. She has a few NES', a Commadore, a Vectrex, an Atari 7800, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff (like 5 xbox 360s). All in near perfect working order.
— LillyVarous

I did a tour at a waste facility. They burn non recyclable waste. What remains is then checked on metals. There's a surprising amount of wedding rings they find apparently.
— Vesalii

There is a guy with a [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/shango066) who digs old TVs out of landfills and dumps and gets them working again. He's done several that have been sitting in a dump out in the California desert for around 40 years, and are full of mud and have weeds growing out of them. The Zeniths always wind up working.
— alaninsitges

My Dad was a member of the DSNY for 20 years, he found some cool stuff: * A brass fire extinguisher turned into a lamp (I still have it) * A Nazi dagger from WWII * Tons of foreign postage stamps (I collected as a kid), including a Hitler Stamp * Old books * radios, TVs, lots of records, 8 track tapes too. Dad said the best time was right after Christmas, people inadvertently tossed away stuff. Mom got a nice pair of boots that way. Occasionally they found drugs - they cycled that stuff quick. They also found a human foot. Very large, like a size 18, from a black male.
— Tsquare43

Some guy wanted to dump a commondore 64 in its original packaging, a fuckton of cartridges and some other stuff. We weren’t allowed to take stuff home and it was being monitored so I told the man to put that shit on eBay. He was delighted
— Talyan

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