The fact that there are dumpster divers points to there being wasteful behaviour in our society. If the shit being thrown out is of use to someone, it should be recycled and reused instead of filling landfills of waste, only to be replaced with the next thing the media tells us we need. If we weren't being wasteful, there would be no dumpster divers.

The dumpster divers are doing the environment a favour. They are recycling what would otherwise be needless waste.

The modern world's conveniences were built up by people who saw how shitty the world looked and wanted to change it. Yes. I agree 100%. The modern world's conveniences are amazing, useful and provide us with a far greater standard of living. What is shit though is the constant treadmill of planned obsolescence, designing for a shelf life, goods that are designed only to last as long as their warranties before they are replaced. We used to live in a society where things were made to last for a lifetime, to be passed on to our heirs when we're gone. Heirloom furniture that can be passed down for generations over hundreds or thousands of years. This has been replaced by pressboard furniture that we're lucky if it lasts for 5-10 years before it's thrown out and replaced. That is what's shit about society, accumulation of the same shit quality stuff, paying over and over again to replace things that don't last. Things that could and should last, just because of what? Planned obsolescence.

He found something he didn't like about society and he found a way to fix it. He helped fix it by not contributing to it any more. In addition to this, he is living on the waste of society - the bits that weren't good enough for you and were heading to an eyesore of a landfill somewhere that got carved out of the landscape damaging the environment.

It's funny how the hip thing right now is "reduce, reuse, recycle". If you're the guy showing a viable way for every family to do this without any emotional discomfort and you're a hero. But the second you dig through other people's trash and do the same thing, you're a pariah.

The fact is capitalist society does have a problem, we're extraordinarily wasteful and we're chasing constantly unattainable happiness. It's unattainable because our happiness is based on the constantly turning wheels of capitalism. We spend money emotionally because the media feeds our need to buy stuff because: "We deserve it", "it'll make us look better", "it'll give us a 6 pack", "it'll help us lose 50 lbs in 6 weeks", "it'll make us more desirable to the opposite sex", "it'll make us feel better", "it'll do whatever it is we need it to do to make us feel better than the last thing we were told to buy that also promised to make us feel better but only worked as long as we didn't realize this other shinier more expensive thing came out."

So someone who can come along that can take the waste and repurpose it into something useful and spare the environment in the process is noble. That's not to say that you're not noble, perhaps what you throw out is genuinely of no use to you, perhaps the bit you didn't throw out was genuinely useful to you and you used it for a noble purpose. Perhaps instead of throwing it out, you could trade it with someone who has use for it that has something that would be of use to you?

And nobody suggested renouncing all of our ancestors work... but renouncing the bits that don't work is healthy. We no longer allow slavery in the West; women can vote; we offer support to those trying to quit drugs, alcohol and smoking; same sex marriage is starting to become widely acceptable; we can touch a piece of glass in our pocket and talk to whole communities of people scattered to the four corners of the earth, the list goes on. There is much about society that we can be really proud of. But there's nothing wrong with renouncing the bits that don't work, nor is there anything wrong with taking steps to mitigate them in your own life and being vocal about them to help mitigate them in other people's lives.

"Be the change you want to see in the world" - Gandhi