Why are people stealing trash cans?

Submitted by oagirl9339 t3_1273dze in washingtondc

This is the second time this has happened to me in three years. I take my bins in promptly after the first time but my roommates and I forgot this week and our bin was stolen. I’m very curious, what are people doing with them? I checked Facebook marketplace to see if there was some sort of black market, but I didn’t see evidence of one. Any insights?

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9throwaway2 t1_jeccbjc wrote

guessing it is a neighbor whose broke and can't get the city to replace theirs fast enough. there is no black market. there are just bad neighbors

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MartinTheMartian1 t1_jecdr2d wrote

Our bin was taken once and we happened to find it — with a bunch of other bins — at a house being renovated. I suspect that construction crews may take them sometimes to avoid having to pay for a dumpster.

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gator_fl t1_jecghs9 wrote

Walk around and also pull up construction permits. Many cases of cheap/lazy contractors that don't want to pay or manage dumpsters. They steal cans, throw construction debris in there, then leave it out on the next block or so or just take it out of the area and dump it in an abandoned lot.

You need to have distinctive borings/paint on your can and also lock it up when not trash day and even direct cameras at it.

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Let your ANC Commissioner know and maybe there's a pattern of same persons.

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DCRealEstateAgent t1_jecxdjo wrote

Spray paint your address all over it. That’s what we have all done in our neighborhood. It helps the cans find their way back when the trash co leaves them all over.

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loonlaugh t1_jecy8tu wrote

If you didn’t paint numbers on it…Call the city and ask for the serial number of the bin associated with your address. Then walk your nearby alleys and look at the front of bins for the engraved number.

(Never knew they were marked until we got a ticket for a bin that was stolen from our house before we moved in and left somewhere illegal.)

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