Pacific Drive's Dumpster Pearls are curious items. You'll start finding them pretty early on in the game: yes, sometimes you'll find them in actual dumpsters but you may also come across them in abandoned delivery trucks or other large containers in the exclusion zone.

You probably tried to open them the same way I did: right then and there using your trusty scrapper. After all, you can easily carve doors and bumpers off cars and strip computers and radios into spare parts with your scrapper. Surely, a Dumpster Pearl, whatever it is, won't put up much of a fight. 

Unfortunately, you can't open a Dumpster Pearl like that. Here's what you need to do.

Pacific Drive Dumpster Pearl: How to open them

Inside a container, the icon for a Dumpster Pearl looks like an oyster, and when you hold or drop it, it looks like a lumpy, shiny rock. When you find a Dumpster Pearl, don't waste your time trying to open it in the zone with a pry bar or scrapper. Throw it in your trunk and save it until you're back at your garage safe and sound. Then haul it out of your trunk and feed it to your Matter Deconstructor.

Your Matter Deconstructor is the ring-shaped piece of equipment that sits near the door to the room where your fabrication station is. (If you're reading this and haven't built that yet, just store the Dumpster Pearl in the garage locker for now. Keep following the introductory quests and you'll be able to build the Matter Deconstructor soon.)

With the Dumpster Pearl in your hands, just walk up to the Matter Deconstructor and use it. It'll quickly chew it up and dump all the resources it contains on the floor, which is usually extra sheet metal, sometimes steel panels, and other odds and ends. Keep an eye out for more Dumpster Pearls while you're exploring the zone: it's a lovely gift from a thoughtful dumpster, and always worth finding room in your trunk for.