Yeah.. one of the many reasons I moved to Boston from the Midwest (Central USA, which is primarily farm and timber country) is that when you dumpster dive where I came from, you didn't get DEC, Raytheon, and WANG castoffs like you do here, pretty much the highest tech you're going to run into is a particularly nice John Deere Manure Spreader or a spare chain saw blade. Now, I like a decent chain saw as much as the next guy, but I'm going to be a lot more interested in a box labeled "MIT Excess Stock, Static Sensistive Equipment" than I am about one labelled "Spair Chanesaw Stuf" scrawled with some type of crayon or biological farm waste..
There were a few other reasons of course, but I believe the quality of an area's trash is something that ought to be considered important by more people.
Hmm, this really is a sickness, isn't it? ;D