Bend resident shares frustrations about strangers sifting through recycling bins in residential neighborhoods
(Update: Adding video, comments from Bend residents, Bend Police Department.)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Some frustrated Bend residents said they’ve experienced strangers going into their recycling cans to retrieve bottles.
In many cases, they're going after bottles they can redeem for cash.
“They go and they start tearing apart peoples trash and they make messes and you feel violated because somebody’s out there in your trash," Mark Vanderberg said Tuesday.
Other than a scattered mess of trash left behind, Vanderberg also feels sifting through people's trash bins is disrespectful to personal property.
Mike Werner picks up bottles up from residential neighborhoods and redeems them at BottleDrop Redemption Center in Bend.
"The police were called a couple times, one for making too much noise, which I was making too much noise," Werner recounted one time he sifted through a homeowner's trash bin. "They didn’t give me a hard time, neither did homeowners."
In another instance Werner recounts, "They said I left garbage around the cans that I was going through. Cops looked and they found no garbage.”
According to Oregon state law, the action is illegal.
"I was told different things from people and police -- that it is (legal) in certain cases, and it isn’t in others," Werner said.
The Bend Police Department says they've received several calls about strangers spotted rummaging through trash in residential neighborhoods.
“If it is garbage or recycling that is in a recycling bin that’s going to be picked up by the company that contracts with city or county services, that is not public property," Bend PD Communications Manager Sheila Miller said Tuesday. "It is not lost or found property. That is the property of either the property owner or the company that is contracted to collect that property.”
Bend Police said violators can face the consequence of third-degree theft, but the situation is circumstantial.
"Basically, what we tell people who are trying to do this kind of thing is that they should ask for permission of the property owner before they come onto someone’s property and access their cans," Miller said.
