Meet the people who can make hundreds of dollars off what students leave behind
Old appliances, empty bottles, even fish, these guys are on the lookout for anything useful
Every year, thousands of students across the city move out of their off-campus homes, leaving their abandoned possessions at the curbside around the Western University and Fanshawe College campus.
And every year, guys like Ray Vens make a good day's pay collecting what they've left.
"I'm grabbing all the stuff that they're throwing out," he said. "The metal we recycle, the electronics we recycle, that's how I make my living."
"Every year they throw out good air conditioners, electronics, anything from bed frames to appliances."
"It's unreal what they throw out"
It's not just scrap metal that ends up getting collected.
"What am I doing? I'm out here making a buck or two or three," said a man who did not want to be identified out of fear his friends would "disown" him if they knew he salvaged student waste.
"I sold $32 worth of beer bottles this morning. Probably gonna make $60 today. This is the good day, when the students are leaving."
It's not just empty liquor bottles he's after.
"Food," he said. "Fish, chicken legs and the beat goes on, sir. It's unreal what they throw out. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never use all the tea bags I'm finding."
"I take it home and I cook what I can and what I can't – what I'm supposed to do with it anyway?"
Good samaritan
Another man, who also did not want to be identified, plays finders keepers on move out day too. Except he doesn't keep anything for himself.
"Whatever I get goes to the church, that's about it," he said.
The church, in this case, is Wings of Prayer Ministries on Colborne Street in downtown London.
In the back of his Subaru station wagon are about 30 or 40 empty beer cans and bottles, scrap metal and small appliances like toasters or coffee makers.
"It's amazing the people you see," he said. "I was out yesterday and I didn't have much as far as alcohol bottles and that, but I saw this other guy, he had a cart and he looked scruffy and he didn't have much, so I just said 'here' and I just give it to him."
"He actually gave me a couple of steel frying pans," he said. "They're going to the church."
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