Who owns your trash? - Part 1: Dumpster Diving
Let’s talk about your trash. Or my trash, or anyone’s trash. We all have it, we all create it, we all throw it away.
Sometimes what we throw away is worthless - fast food wrappers, dirty diapers, or your VHS copy of Buns of Steel. But sometimes what we throw away holds value to someone else: financial documents, DNA, receipts, old jewelry.
When is your trash fair game to anyone – law enforcement, journalists, private investigators, or simple dumpster divers? The answer isn’t very simple, but knowing the rules (and your rights) can go a long way in protecting yourself and the people around you.
Let’s dip our dirty little garbage toes into some terminology:
Fourth Amendment – The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring warrants based on probable cause, with some exceptions.
Curtilage – The land immediately surrounding a house or dwelling, this includes a fenced yard.
If you stopped reading right here, the takeaway is this: garbage sitting within your curtilage is protected. Law enforcement generally needs a warrant to go through it, and anyone who walks onto your property to reach it may be trespassing.
No let’s dive deeper:
What about garbage rolled out to the curb for pickup? That’s generally* fair game.
If I roll my bin to the curb the night before collection and tuck in for dreams of gummy bears and lollipops, there isn’t much stopping anyone from going through it. The Supreme Court settled this in 1988, holding that police didn’t need a warrant to search bags a suspect left at the curb. The Court’s reasoning: curbside trash is accessible to animals, children, scavengers, and snoops – and more importantly, you’ve handed it over to a third party, the garbage collector, to do with it as they please.
That bring us to a phrase worth knowing: reasonable expectation of privacy.
For the Fourth Amendment to apply, you need an actual, subjective expectation of privacy and it’s an expectation that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The interior of your home qualifies. As does your curtilage, a closed suitcase, and a hotel room you’ve rented. All of the places that are not open to public inspection.
When you put out trash for the night for pickup, your reasonable expectation of privacy is gone. You’re leaving items in a bin - unprotected, outside of your curtilage, overnight. Federally, trash on the curb does not have an expectation of privacy.*
Knowing this, how can you protect yourself from prying eyes?
Put your garbage cans out in the hour deemed acceptable by your city, or the morning of pickup to limit the time it is out.
Know your local ordinances. Many Illinois municipalities prohibit unauthorized removal of set-out trash, which gives an enforcement option.
Use a shredder for important documents, including anything that has an account number, Social Security number, or signature.
Go paperless – and save trees!
Remove or destroy labels on pill bottles.
Overall, you can’t make curbside trash private in Illinois and no measures fully substitute that. What you can do is make your trash uninteresting and only briefly available, which handles essentially all opportunistic scavenging (and identity theft) risk.
*Different states and municipalities have different rules about ownership and scavenging, which can further restrict public access.
***I’m not a lawyer. This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.***
