Dumpster diving has become its own small genre online, and a recent TJ Maxx haul shows why.
A creator on the TikTok account Dumpster Divers jumped up to look inside a locked TJ Maxx dumpster and found a Michael Kors purse still carrying its price tag, along with jewelry and beauty products that appeared untouched. The video has picked up thousands of comments, many asking why any of it ended up in the trash to begin with.
She explains at the start that the dumpster is usually locked. “Again, they lock it, so I actually have to jump up. But look what I saw when I looked in here,” she says, before pulling out a bag and tearing into it. “I just ripped into this bag, and there’s some good stuff in here. And then there’s also. Looks like some purses, and doesn’t look like they destroyed it,” she says while digging through it.
There was more to it?
One bag catches her attention right away. “Oh, my gosh, that’s Michael Kors. There’s a Michael Kors purse, $99,” she says. The tag being intact is what makes the find stand out, and it fits a pattern of unexpected branded finds that keep showing up in places people don’t expect.
A second bag, buried under the first, has more inside, including a necklace she assumed would be broken. “And I don’t know if this is inside, but. What is this? A necklace. And it’s not broken. That’s so cool,” she says. By the end of the dig, she says she also picked up a couple of beauty mystery bags and a pair of earrings priced at $60.
The find also sparked a familiar argument about whether it matters if someone takes something that has already been thrown away. One asked the question a lot of viewers seemed to share: “I’m confused, if it’s in the trash why would they care if people got it?”
Another commenter framed it as a waste issue: “Right! Cause capitalism rather waste than donate or run an actual clearance sale!! Like make it make sense!”
A third took a simpler view: “it’s not stealing if it’s thrown away….idc what y’all say.”
What makes the haul unusual is that so little of it appears damaged. Some retailers do the opposite and damage items on purpose before tossing them, something a mechanic recently described doing with tires he throws out, specifically so they can’t be reused.
TJ Maxx hasn’t commented on the video, so it’s not clear why these particular items were thrown out rather than marked down or donated. The video doesn’t answer that question either, but it does show exactly what was sitting inside the locked dumpster.
Published: Aug 19, 2026 02:13 pm