Jacksonville dumpster diving: Items you buy online may have come from a dumpster

Valuable products tossed into a dumpster could be sold to you as brand new.

Some items for sale on the Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist really come from businesses' trash.

If one man's trash is another man's treasure, Jeremie is a treasure hunter.

“I've found a PlayStation 3 before. I've found video games. I mean, anyone that has kids or plays video games themselves, they consider that a treasure,” said the Jacksonville father.

He's asked us not to share his last name to protect his kids.

For some, dumpster diving is about conservation.

For others, it’s purely profit.

Jeremie used to dumpster dive out of necessity when work was scarce.

His family would keep most of his haul and sell the rest.

Now he does it recreationally.

More than 100,000 people have watched his Jacksonville dumpster diving videos on his YouTube channel "H0nkeyk0ng."

"One guy was like, 'You're like a white King Kong.' And I’m like, 'Oh, so I’m a Honky Kong.' So that's how that name came around,” said Jeremie.

The State Attorney’s Office confirms dumpster diving itself is not illegal, but that doesn’t mean you’re criminally off the hook.

“When you go onto someone else's property, and you go into someone else's equipment, you're trespassing. Now in Florida, there's a requirement that you be noticed not to trespass. It's called trespass after warning. So, you have to be warned,” said Action News Jax Law and Safety expert Dale Carson.

So, until someone tells you not to, you're free to dumpster dive.

An Action News Jax investigation in May revealed employees at a Jacksonville Ulta Beauty were accused of using bleach to deter dumpster divers.

“Top value haul I’ve ever gotten was probably from the Ulta dumpster. They'd actually poured a bunch of chemicals on their stuff trying to ruin it, but there was a lot of stuff – we could clean it off, clean it up and it was still good as new. I believe it wound up being $800 worth of makeup and accessories,” said Jeremie. “My wife actually wears it.”

What his family doesn't keep or donate, Jeremie sells online.

“I usually don't tell them it came out of a dumpster. I usually tell them that I come across it, I found it, it was being let go from a company, or whatever like that,” he said.

So the next time you’re scoping out an item on the Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, know before you click that it may have been pulled out of a dumpster.

Cox Media Group