Teen lad reveals scavenging in skips netted him £20,000 haul, including iPods and Xboxes, AND cured his anorexia
The phrase ‘one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure’ couldn’t be truer for this canny lad
This resourceful anorexia sufferer decided to start raiding skips in a bid to distract himself from his illness and has since accumulated discarded goodies up the value of £20,000.
At the height of his illness, Matt Smith withed just 8st 5lb (120lb), a dangerously low weight for a person of 6ft.
In order to have something else to focus on 18-year-old Matt began 'dumpster diving', checking skips and bins for valuable unwanted items.
He has now overcome the devastating eating disorder and amassed a swag worth thousands of pounds from the rubbish tips.
His haul includes food, stationery and electrical goods.
Nursing student Matt, from Rapid Michigan, USA said: "I had a rough two years and started dumpster diving for giggles to boost my mood a little.
"When I began finding all the stuff and seeing all the potential it had, I started donating it to food banks, launching an online business from it and taking it as far as I could."
Matt had previously been a talented runner but when he was 16, his passion for fitness became an obsession and he began training for eight hours a day and only eating 300 calorie meals of just leaves.
He lost 30lbs and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment where his heart rate plummeted dangerously low.
"They said there's no way I would have survived the summer - my heart would've stopped,” he said.
"That's when I started dumpster diving as an outlet from the obsessions with food, weight, and exercise. At that point, it was the only thing I enjoyed."
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Matt found inspiration for the hobby on YouTube and was amazed that many shops would throw away expensive goods worth hundreds of pounds.
His first trip was to an office store, where he found hundreds of school supplies, including pens, paper, calendars and electric staplers.
"I'm fairly cheap and the idea of free things caught my imagination," he said.
Matt continued with the practise, which is legal in his home state, but illegal in the UK as the items are still considered the shop’s property even after they are thrown away.
Matt often finds bags full of unopened fresh fruit and dozens of packets of sweets and chocolates, hauling as much as £460 worth of goods from one two hour trip, covering as many as ten dumpsters.
He's also come across home iPods, an Xbox and cameras and, his biggest prize to date, a brand new Toshiba laptop, still in its box, worth £600.
After several months of pillaging skips and bins, Matt had accumulated too many things for his family home so he started donating some items to charity.
He has now set up an eBay store where he sells the unwanted wares, earning £2,200 to date, which he intends to put towards his university tuition.
Thanks to dumpster diving, Matt is healthier than ever and putting his focus into helping his local community - donating goods to food banks every three months.
He said: "Some stores do catch me and threaten to call the police, but there's nothing they can do – it's legal.
"Now lots of them will purposefully destroy the goods. They cover items in special paint that you can't get off.
"I found a dozen GPS systems and all the screens were smashed, which was pretty upsetting."
Matt is horrified by this uncharitable behaviour.
"The store's mentality is if we can't have it and make a profit from it then neither can you," he said.
"Then everyone is going to lose in that situation."