This is probably one of those things that happens all the time but rises up to a level of awareness only every few years: the people who come through neighborhoods to scavenge through trash.

They come early, before the city crews pick up bulky items on the appointed day. Sometimes they come in the dark of night to pick through a pile of waterlogged end tables and termite-chewed dressers. Sometimes you hear the clatter as they load pieces of your long-dead exercise equipment or metal shoe racks into their truck. In the morning as you head out to work, you wonder why your stuff is gone but the refuse workers haven’t come by yet.

Some come during the light of day. If you go out to give them the dirty eye, they might say something like, “You don’t mind, right?” or, “Hey, thought I’d help you out here, help you get rid of this.” Sometimes they act like they just got busted, and they shove the discarded bookshelf into their hatchback, jump into their car and take off.

It’s not just bulky items. It’s stuff from the blue recycling bins, too. Scavengers appear on the mornings when the bins are out waiting, before the trucks have come through, and they pick through to find plastic water bottles and soda cans that can be redeemed for 5 cents apiece.

It’s not easy to pick through those blue bins even if you’re tall, even if you have a long-handled grabber, even if you brought a picking buddy to help. It’s messy, awkward work. In some communities there are “regulars” who are known to break open trash bags and root around for bottles and cans.

What are they hurting, right? One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that. That’s grassroots recycling.

That’s one way to look at it.

But there are laws on the books that prevent scavenging.

City Ordinance Sec 9-1.6 states, “No person shall remove or disturb any refuse, green waste and other recyclable materials … from the place where the same has been placed for collection.” Despite what you may have seen on “Law and Order” about curbside trash being “public property,” in Honolulu it’s still the responsibility of the owner, and the only “authorized persons” who may remove, disturb, collect, haul away or transport the stuff are the owner, city refuse collectors and licensed collectors.

Is anybody going to call the cops because someone is lifting the stuff they put out on the curb as refuse? Maybe. If it became habitual or egregious. But there are other things to worry about in most neighborhoods, and, bottom line, you didn’t want that bookshelf anyway. Maybe the larger point to make in all this, other than the violation of the city ordinance or the green living- reuse-recycle angle is that Oahu is a place where some people feel they have to scavenge through other people’s trash to make money.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.