Cardboard Lumber

Step 2 How to get Cardboard

Super Moral and Totally legal free cardboard:
Save up cardboard from boxes your family uses. You'll be surprised how fast it adds up.
Go around town and ask any businesses if they have any cardboard you could take. It will likely be already broken down for you.

Super moral and Mostly legal free cardboard:
If you're in a hurry, or just lazy, you can drive around the back of stores and look through their recycling dumpsters for cardboard. Be warned though that dumpster diving is a crime, but most people will be fine with you hauling away some of their trash.

Maybe legal and moral free plastic cardboard:
Those corrugated plastic advertising and campaign signs scattered around your neighborhood are considered litter/unclaimed property in *some* areas. Snatch a bunch of them up fast and you'll have an awesome start to rock solid, corrugated plastic lumber (Be sure to use glue designed for plastic though. Wheatpaste won't work.)

Most of my cardboard came from my school cafeteria and my family's recycle.

Comments

[sonipitts]

Actually, dumpster diving is NOT a crime in most areas, as long as the dumpster is not on private property, locked or fenced up. YMMV, depending on where you live, but the law generally considers trash to be abandoned by the owner and therefore free game. OTOH, most cardboard storage dumpsters are going to be on store property. So ask first, and leave the place at least as clean as you found it, if not more so.

[flamekiller]

This. For example, LE can look through your trash without a warrant once you put it on the curb. By the same token, if the cardboard bin isn't in an area that's off limits to the general public, you're more than likely good to go.

That said, to avoid any problems, just ask the store.

[theRIAA]

yea.. just like you cant go into safeway and walk behind the register to look through the drawers for things you want, you cant go in back and look through the cardboard.

[ipisors]

You don't go in "the back", you just go in the main store while they are unpacking and take them. Almost any store in the US will let you take empty boxes from them, every day. it's trash. yes, they get maybe a penny a box for recycling them, but it's about equal to the work you're saving them from baling and processing it.