While contacting companies may feel like a freebie lottery, winning is great. First determine which companies you think might give out freebies, try large companies that can afford them. Next determine how to contact them, do you email? Send a letter? Call? each of these ways may give different results, try all three. You can just ask for freebies and while that might work straight out, you might try commending them, let them know you are thrilled with the products. If you are going to call to complain don’t be upset, let them know what you experienced and that you are calling to “help them take care of their customers better”.

• Check out community websites for more free things. The free section of craigslist is a good resource if you live in a metropolitan area, and many communities have freecycle groups where people give away their unwanted treasures to keep them out of landfills. If you participate in one of these communities, remember to give as well as receive.
• If you live near a university, especially a rich one like Princeton, for example, you are in luck! When graduation rolls around the seniors have to move out fast and leave lots of great stuff behind. Also, underclassmen do, too, but usually that occurs right before graduation. So get in tune with the local college. Some janitors are nice and allow you to paw through the bags of stuff they leave outside the dorms to be picked up by the trash guys…
• Dive with a friend. Dumpster diving is a lot more fun with company. It’s also a lot safer. A friend can help you out if you become injured or can help defuse confrontations and keep look out.
• Empty your pockets and take off any jewelry before entering a dumpster. You don’t want to lose anything in the trash.
• If confronted by a business owner, resident, rubbish hauler, or police officer, be polite and explain what you are doing. Many times people will assume that you are illegally dumping trash and will not bother you if they understand that you are not. In any case, always be friendly and respectful, and try to understand the other person’s point of view: business owners who tell you to leave the premises, for example, may be concerned about their legal liability if you were to be injured.
• While diving, keep a few cardboard boxes around outside the dumpster in a little pile. If confronted, you can say you were searching for some boxes to help with a move. The employees are more likely to give you a better reaction than if you tell them you were looking for products they sell.
• If you see something you want, it doesn’t hurt to ask the dumpster owners before you grab. There are times when they haven’t finished tossing stuff and you’ll get firsties on the rest!
• Let it be known in your neighborhood that you find homes for discards. Many people can’t be bothered to call a charity shop, but are all too happy to ask a neighbor to haul things away for them.
• Tips for finding food. You don’t want full dumpsters, you want freshly filled dumpsters. That only happens on Mondays. So Monday night is grocery night. Monday all grocery store dumpsters get emptied of the weekend trash that accumulates because the trash companies usually work Mon-Fri. So nothing has been in the dumpster longer than a few hours if you dive Monday nights.
• Certain delivery trucks like dairy, Lays, Entenmanns, Fisher and Planters, Breads and Pastries, candy, etc., will dump the days collected expired dated items in the dumpsters at their last delivery stop of the day so they go back empty. Those items are always neatly packed in large garbage bags in the truck so they can be easily disposed of. That means they are clean and protected in the dumpster. Monday they have the largest load of expired stuff because of the weekend. Also they are most likely to find more empty dumpsters on Monday than other days of the week.
• Before vaulting into a dumpster you hit the side of the dumpster a few times and disturb its contents on the top. That gives the rats, possums, raccoons and squirrels opportunities to surface and escape. Coons leave quickly as do squirrels. Possums will fight. Rats will run over the top of you to get away.
• A white butcher smock makes you look like a grocery store employee and you are seldom bothered by other dumpster divers or law enforcement when they see that smock. A cheap set of long handled fireplace log tongs work wonderfully for retrieving items if you don’t want to climb in. A miner’s cap with the light is better than a flashlight because it allows you to work two-handed, and then you aren’t always losing that light into the bottom of the dumpster. I had a rigged light that fit on my left arm, but this sometimes wasn’t good because I couldn’t see behind or to the right without turning my body. That cap light will not look like a grocery store clerk, however.
• If you don’t like to get very dirty, you can try magazine dumpster diving. The magazine recycling boxes are usually very clean, and sometimes you can find some very good reading material in them if you don’t want to buy a subscription to a magazine.
• If you are worried about safety, you can park your car in front of the dumpster to make it impossible to have it dumped. In some cases this is illegal, but if you are diving on a day close to trash pickup day, it could save your life..

Send a self addressed stamped envelope to:

SEND ME SOME G-MAIL STICKERS ALREADY
PO BOX 391420
Mountain View, Ca. 94039-1420

If you want to complain or compliment a product, the company may send you out free stuff. These are some of the companies who have been confirmed to do so.  Check their product packaging for an address.

• Apple
• McDonalds
• Coke
• Pepsi
• Laura Secord
• Spitz Sunflower Seeds
• Hersheys
• Duracell
• Levis
• Wrigley’s
• Walkers (UK)
• Tayto Crisps
• Cadburys (UK)
• Nestle (UK)
• Smiths Chips(tazos)
• Wise Snacks
• Utz of Hanover
• Altoids
• Starbucks
• Life Saver mints
• First Act

See how one guy “won” by sending out requests for freebies to 100 different companies, costing him a total of $39 in

postage (at the time). the39dollarexperiment.com