Blue box-mining London teen leaves other gleaners seeing red

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A London teenager who’s been picking through blue boxes to help save up for his education is getting the third degree from other gleaners, his mother says. 

For more than three years now, 14-year-old Brise Refflinghaus has sifted through the curbside bins in his east London neighbourhood on recycling day, plucking out beer cans and liquor bottles to redeem the deposits charged on them to earn money for his college fund. 

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Brise, who has autism, wants to contribute to his own future, said mom Ashley Refflinghaus. He also enjoys fishing, and has already bought a used aluminum boat from his rounds.

“I like fishing,” he said. “But I still have to buy a motor. I want to keep going with collecting.” 

At age 10, Refflinghaus said, her son wrote on a Christmas wish list that he “wanted a PhD and a master’s degree.” Soon after, he started collecting.

“College is very expensive. I think it’s great he wants to be able to make his own money and save,” she said. “But with him being autistic, things are a lot more different but he’s doing great and he loves it. ”

But while her son’s efforts make her proud, Refflinghaus said other collectors in the area aren’t happy with the competition and her son has heard from other people, too.

“A lady saw him going through her recycling and said he should get a real job,” she said.  “Another gentleman (who was collecting cans from the bins) told him he should not collect cans in that area.”

Raiding blue boxes for their contents isn’t allowed under a London bylaw, but the city’s point man on waste and recycling collection said it’s not a huge issue.

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“There is limited impact on the recycling program unless scavengers make a mess at the curb. Then it’s very disruptive to neighbourhoods,” said Jay Stanford, London’s environment and waste management director.

“At this point in time, we don’t view it as a priority versus other important work we and our recycling contractor do.”

Stanford said beer cans and liquor bottles shouldn’t go into blue boxes since they’re separately retrieved from the waste stream through a deposit-return system. Consumers, instead, should take those empties to the Beer Store to redeem the extra charges they pay when they buy those products.

Some Londoners overlook that and put the empties in their blue boxes, anyway, but Stanford said that only “encourages scavenging.”

After Refflinghaus’s intimidating encounters with scavengers in the area, his mother turned to social media to ask Londoners for help. 

“I don’t know what people are capable of nowadays. (Brise) doesn’t know how to respond to aggressive people,” she said of her son. 

Autism spectrum disorder, whose symptoms and severity can vary widely, is a developmental condition that can affect social interaction and communication with others and may be marked by repetitive types of behaviour. Refflinghaus said her son is on the spectrum but is high-functioning.

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She said her call for help on social media led to an overwhelming response, including donations of bags of cans and bottles from people who sympathize with her son’s hard work. His sister and mother have been helping him pick up the bags and count their contents.

A Grade 9 student at Sir Wilfrid Laurier secondary school in London, Brise is considering a future career in computer science. He’s collected about $180 to $200 a week to save up for post-secondary school and the used fishing boat. 

bbaleeiro@postmedia.com
@BeaBaleeiro

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