In my city, there are mounds of clear plastic bags and boxes on the curbs on recycling night. I just walk on the sidewalk and can see what's in the plastic bags or loose on top of them, or peek in boxes. It's fairly clean and most stuff went from a shelf to the bag/box at most 6 days ago, so it's almost like thrifting for free. I've never dumpster dived or anything like that. I just walk on my city streets and it's literally in plain sight (or I lift some bags in the piles to see what's below).