Is there anything I can do about strangers digging through my trash?

Pretty much not. Some locales have laws against dumpster diving. Read this article.

Ask the management to lock up trash bin with a combination lock for tenants only.

Probably not. Your discarded trash is no longer your property, and anyone can dig through it and take things.

That’s why police detectives go dumpster-diving. If they find something incriminating, it’s admissible as evidence. The police don’t need a warrant to take your trash; the evidence gets found and collected under perfectly legal circumstances.

Digging through trash is a tried and true method for law enforcement to find out all sorts of evidence they could not get otherwise. You are your trash.

We have stranger going through our trash too – raccoons, possum, crows, cats.
We do two things to control it:
1) We put the trash out the morning of pick up. (Thursday morning )
2) We ‘accidentally’ make our trash so disgusting that it discourages tampering.
Our critters are discouraged by a sprinkling of laundry powder on the bags. Your strangers would likely be discouraged by a bag of trash that has used cooking oil and grease poured all over the contents.
(This is not environmentally sound but a few ounces of used motor oil from your last oil change will make an unbelievably stinky mess that will ruin their clothes and be difficult to clean off their hands.)
Do it every time! After a month or two they will learn.

@LuckyGuy I spray the outsides of my garbage bags with blue window cleaner. Ammonia is a powerful critter deterrent.

@SadieMartinPaul Critters are easily discouraged. The ones wearing latex gloves need something a little more potent.
The OP needs to increase the penalty for dumpster diving in her trash so the cost far exceeds the benefits. A gallon of used motor oil will last a long time. You can get one for free at your local repair shop or auto parts store. (Tell them you want it to lubricate your chainsaw chain. Don’t mention the intended use.)

But what if the activity is related to crime solving? Wouldn’t you like to be eliminated from the crowd of suspects?

Specially marked/colored recycling bins, yes. Normal dumpsters need to be locked in most municipalities.

If someone has to dig through your trash in order to be able to survive, I kind of think that’s punishment enough, don’t you?

You could throw away mousetraps that you set beforehand.

Hey, I was gonna say that!^^

eyeroll I’m a practically professional dumpster diver.

No one cares about your junk mail. We’re looking for furniture, electronics, useful, decorative, or collectible items, and possibly art supplies. Toys are a hit, too.

Why on earth should it bother you that people salvage useful things instead of allowing them to be incinerated?

Putting all the valuable stuff next to the bin helps a lot and is actually recommended by my landlord. I put cans and bottles next to it so they know that they don’t really need to climb inside for the good stuff. And I have noticed that there is people that make rounds in our dumpster. Even if someone grabs the good stuff they will bail pretty quickly since they learn that it is a waste of time.

^ This is a strategy adopted by many businesses in my city as well. It’s kind of win/win.

Who cares? If you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing.
If it’s just trash, let them have at it. I’d leave a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers on the dumpster.

Get creative…bury some hidden treasure in your trash and watch their eyes light up when it is discovered.

I don’t throw things away with the intention of broadcasting it to strangers, but rather to have it thrown away. I throw it in a garbage bin, so I intend for it to go where trash is supposed to go. @Coloma And the people that dig through the bin are usually disgusting with their pants halfway off and looking like they haven’t bathed in days.

I hate it when people dig through my trash! One of the reasons I’m moving soon. Nothing like coming home in the morning (I work nights) to see some crack addict in a wife beater digging through garbage and ripping the bags.

I second the idea to dump some grease or used motor oil in your trash. Just the top of it will do.

I leave open cat feces in the bag. Seems to discourage them, at least part of the time. Another thing I do is layer my dirty cat litter bags on top so that when they begin to rifle, it will spill on them.

If I wanted some crackhead to gave my trash, I’d put it on display for them.

Ask your landlord to have a locked fence around the dumpster so people can’t rifle through it.

You could take the trash to the waste processing center yourself. Then the only low-class scoundrels you would have to lay your eyes upon would be the civil servants who work at the facility.

I must admit I don’t understand what’s so bad about not wanting strangers ripping through your trash. It’s unsightly, it rips up the bags and creates a mess, and you have to be paranoid about what you put out there.

I’m hardly “high class” myself. I’m college educated but I only make a few dollars over min wage. Still, my boyfriend and I have our own place and I don’t like seeing people on the property, going through our trash.

By the way putting nasty things on the garbage bag affects the city worker who is going to pick it up.

Plenty of people are throwing out things instead of putting it in the recycling, so they are reusing, recycling.

But the best reason is because of permalink