by Sandy McKay
He said if we were serious about our projects there were lots of things we could do. Write to companies, make protests, send letters to newspaper editors.
As consumers (people who buy stuff) it was up to each and everyone of us to make informed decisions (get to know as much as we can). Read labels, he said. Refuse to buy products that have been over-packaged or tested on animals.
He told us all these serious things and Lizzie and Melanie just giggled and looked at everyone in the room except for Byron and me. Did they not realise how obvious they were being or what?!
At the end he gave us pamphlets with instructions on how to make compost heaps, where to take stuff for recycling and how to write protest letters to manufacturers.
When I got home I went straight to the bathroom cabinet and cleared away all the products that had been tested on animals. Unfortunately for Mum, this included all her make-up except for a bottle of moisturiser that came from the ‘Body Shop’. Peter Peat said unless it said on the label that it hadn’t been tested on animals then it probably had been. Sorry, Mum.
After that I got three plastic buckets from the garage and labelled them with a black felt pen. Paper, plastic, and compost. Then I cleared some weeds out of Dad’s 44 gallon drum and made my first compost bin. I put everything in layers like the pamphlet said. I grabbed a bucket of grass clippings from the heap by the fence, some kitchen scraps from the rubbish bin, and then I shovelled up some sawdust that was lying on the garage floor. Apparently, you can compost any organic matter – even human hair which is very rich in nitrogen. I thought about nicking some of Allie’s nitrogen-rich locks when she was asleep but I didn’t want to be held responsible for ruining her modelling career. God knows, she needed all the help she could get.
My new plan was to take all the paper and plastic products down to Paddy’s for recycling at the weekend. The rest I’d make compost out of and Dad could use it for his garden. It made a lot of sense. What was the use of burying everything if you could put it straight back on the garden and help things grow. Far better to respect the natural cycle of life.
When I die, I’d like to be composted. Then Allie could remember me when she was munching on a carrot and know that I was a useful human being after all. Which was more than could be said for her. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, what use are models to the future of our planet?
I made one final touch to our new arrangements. I made a sign that read ‘Stop… Can I be recycled?’ and stuck it onto the rubbish bag. After that I went upstairs to feed Lucky his daily dose of Jellymeat.
It was starting to get dark when the phone rang.
“Gidday, lad.”
It was Paddy. His Scottish accent was so strong I knew straight away even though he was whispering. “How’s that project of yours going?”
“Great. We had a visit from a man from Greenpeace today.”
“Great. Great. Look, can you come down, Col?” he said.
“Where? When?”
“Here. Now. I’ve got a wee job for you. Something that might be interesting for your project. And, hey kid, I need a hand.”
I told him I could be there in ten minutes if I rode my bike real fast.
“Bring your camera,” he said.
“What is it? It’s not another kitten, is it? I don’t think I’d be allowed another one.”
“No. It’s not another kitten.”
“Well, what then?’
“You’ll see. You’ll have to be careful. Come around the back way and don’t let anyone see you. I’ll be busy. Just wait in the caravan until I give the all clear.”
It all sounded very suspicious. What was he ringing ME for?
7
“In the last 50 years we have used as much coal as in the whole of history to date.”
YOU WON’T BELIEVE what happened next. I didn’t.
Hey! What would you do if you came face to face with a truck load of chocolate bars? Freak out or stay cool?
No kidding. When I got to the Rubbish Rescue Centre there was a truck unloading thousands of chocolate bars into a big hole.
I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was seeing things.
I went around the back way like Paddy told me, then I sat in the caravan and wondered what the heck was going on. The truck just carried on tipping, and all these chocolate bars tumbled out. I tried to get a photograph but with Paddy running about like a chook with his head newly severed it was hard to get a good shot. You really needed a camera with a long lens and a powerful flash, not a pocket instamatic.
On the side of the truck it said ‘Yum Yum Chocolate Factory’ in orange lettering. I could see that part. Then the driver of the truck got out and walked over to where Paddy was. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about because they were too far away, but they stood there for a few minutes. Paddy looked like he was signing something. He took his hands out of his pocket and it looked like he had a pen in his hand. Then both men shook hands and the driver wandered back to his truck. Paddy must have decided to light his cigarette because I could see the flame from a match. He stood there for a minute, until the truck had driven off. Then he went and closed the gates.
I stayed where I was in the caravan and waited for Paddy to come over.
“Sorry to call you out at this time of night,” said Paddy. “I suppose you were busy with homework. Was it okay with your folks?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Mum’s out and Dad said it was okay as long as it wasn’t for long and I was careful on my bike.”
“I needed some help,” he said. “I needed someone to keep a look-out for me and also…” he looked around suspiciously, lowered his voice and covered his mouth with his hand. “I wanted you to see what goes on. I thought it might be useful for your project.”
“What is going on?” I said. I had absolutely no idea why I was here at seven o’clock at night, taking photos and keeping guard while a truck from the Yum Yum Chocolate Factory tipped hundreds of chocolate bars into a hole.
“Over-production,” said Paddy. “The factory produces too much and then they get rid of it. Happens all the time.” Paddy stubbed out his smoke and put what was left back behind his ear for next time.
“So it just gets buried? Wasted! Why?”
“Over-production. Market forces. If they overproduce, the market gets flooded and the prices go down. Simple economics.”
“Couldn’t they just give it away?”
“Apparently not.”
“But what about the food banks? The starving children overseas or even our own Simon Smith?”
Last year we did a 40 hour famine at school to raise money for ‘World Vision’. There were pictures of kids on the tele who looked even worse than those kittens we found. This chocolate would keep them going for months. Instead it was getting buried in the ground. All this chocolate. I couldn’t believe it. And Simon Smith never had any lunch because his family didn’t have any money and all this time food was getting buried so the prices wouldn’t go down.
“It’s not just chocolate,” said Paddy. “Last season there was too much crayfish on the market so we had to bury a whole lot of that. And bread. Every week there’s bread. I just thought you might like to know. For your project. It’s all important, isn’t it? For your project, I mean.”
I knew the world of economics was complicated but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that tipping perfectly good food into a hole was a real dicky idea.
Paddy looked at his watch and asked if I could keep watch while he went and covered up the hole with the digger. “Just in case,” he said. “Just in case.”
Operation Chocolate Burial was complete at 7:35pm.
I wanted to ask if there was any going spare but thought it might be in bad taste.
I tried another line of enquiry.
“Hey, Paddy. Couldn’t we give some away? To the hospital or something. Or Women’s Refuge?”
“Nah. I’d lose me licence if I did that.”
“Pity.”<
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I rode home in the dark with my battery operated light whirring at the same pace as my brain. What a messed up world this was turning out to be. There were things going on that I didn’t understand, that didn’t make sense. Things that didn’t seem fair.
On Saturday the Roseview Rubbish Rescue Centre was buzzing. I was helping people unload their trailers which was proving to be a very lucrative occupation. So far I had managed to rescue a perfectly good mountain bike that just needed a couple of new wheels and I’d scored a yellow formica coffee table for Mum, six clay pots that were far too good to throw away, a gas lamp, and a pair of overalls. Oh… and I also had the beginnings of a gumboot collection.
At this rate we’d soon be needing a bigger house. Well, that’s what Mum said every Saturday when I arrived home with a ton of new treasures. I don’t know what she was moaning about. Bigger houses meant bigger commissions.
At four o’clock when things were slowing down a bit Paddy asked me to come and have a cuppa in the caravan.
He poured himself some tea from a thermos flask and gave me a tin mug full of milk that tasted warm, like it’d been sitting in the sun all day.
Paddy was a great guy and I enjoyed talking to him. He was interested in my school project and he also liked to talk about his own family. Turned out he had six kids! But they were all a lot older than me. Five boys and a girl. And he’d recently become a grandad. I got the impression that money was tight and he got by on a very lean budget. Recycling wasn’t exactly a good way to make money. His wife worked night shift at the Yum Yum Chocolate Factory but he didn’t mention any more about that.
We were just getting into a good conversation about whether cans should be banned from sale like they had been in Denmark when there was a knock on the door.
The door swung back and in clambered a woman – in the hugest high heeled shoes I’d ever seen. She wore a green spotted shirt and her hair was dyed white like chalk. Bright white with a row of brown roots down the middle. Her lips were painted orange and she had the sort of smile that didn’t reach her eyes. When she smiled her lips stretched tight and smeared her teeth orange. Yuck! She looked nervous and smelled like she’d fallen headfirst into a perfume bottle. Paddy coughed.
“Mr McTavish,” she said in a whingey voice. “How nice to meet you at last,” and she thrust out a hand full of diamond-ringed fingers to be shaken. Paddy shook them and looked puzzled.
“I just came over to check how things are going. Make sure there are no hard feelings. Diana Vial is my name. I wrote you a letter last month. Well, I haven’t heard anything so I just thought I’d check…”
Diana Vial looked too bright to be true as she stood nervously in Paddy McTavish’s dingy caravan.
Paddy’s face went white.
“Diana Vial. Well, well, well,” he said. “I wondered when you’d show up. And now that you’ve shown up I’d like you to leave. Your letter was a complete waste of energy and hopefully will have a more productive life as a recycled envelope.”
Diana Vial looked blank. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I chucked it out,” yelled Paddy. “Filed it under ‘R’ for rubbish.”
“You shouldn’t have done that Mr McTavish. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve still got the original like my lawyer advised.”
“Lawyer,” said Paddy “What lawyer? You haven’t got a leg to stand on. The law is on my side.”
“’Fraid not,” said Diana. “It’s all here in black and white. Have a look for yourself. Clause 28. This land is designated residential. The motion was passed at a Council meeting last month. Signed, sealed and delivered. You should be hearing from the Council soon. Your grotty little operation will have to go.”
Paddy grabbed the paper and shook his head. “There’s been some mistake. There’s definitely been some mistake.”
The orange lips stretched wide, wide, wider and Diana Vial tottered out of the caravan. We watched as she climbed into a bright red sports car and sped out the gates.
“Figures,” said Paddy laughing at the sight of the red sports car getting stuck in a patch of mud and splattering its windscreen with slush. But he looked worried.
“She can’t be right,” he said. “She can’t be.”
“What does it mean. What is she on about?”
“It means the Council have rezoned this land. They want to build posh houses on it. If it’s residential then I can’t operate my business.”
“But don’t you own the land?”
“No. I lease it from the Council. And old Orange Lips and a few of the neighbours have been trying to get me shut down for ages. Reckon it devalues their land. Stuck-up cronies the lot of them. She wants me outta here and money talks. She’s probably bribed one of the councillors or something.”
Paddy looked like the sky was going to fall in.
8
“One quarter of the world’s species could be extinct in the next 20–30 years.”
PROBLEMS. Problems. Problems. Who needs them?
Back at home things were not improving. How could we have a waste-free city when we couldn’t even manage a waste-free household? It was a joke.
The rubbish bin bulged with umpteen wasted trees already and it was only Tuesday. No-one was using the buckets I’d organised and everyone carried on as if fossil fuels would last forever. Allie spent all her time applying nail polish, reading her ‘Calorie Counter’ book, or yapping on the phone to Monica. Even Lucky didn’t seem interested in anything ecological. All he cared about these days was finding the best patch of sun and how much Jellymeat was left in the can. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to save the planet single-handedly.
When I got home from rugby practice Mum was watching tele. This was something I hadn’t seen her do for ages.
“No houses to sell, tonight, Mum?”
“I’m giving myself a night off,” she said. “Actually, I’m waiting on a phone call about a section I’ve been trying to flick off.”
‘Flick-off’ was Real Estate-speak for ‘sell’ – apparently. “If I pull the deal off, I’ll be in for a nice tidy commission.”
Mum was sounding more and more like a sleazy businessman these days, not like a mother at all. And when Lucky came purring around her ankles she just gave him a bit of a flick-off like he was a fly or something. Mothers weren’t supposed to be like that. They were supposed to be mushy and soft-centred, like a caramel cream, not tough and hard-nosed like peanut brittle.
Why couldn’t she be like those mothers on the tele who stayed in the kitchen all day, and couldn’t wait for their sons to come home, so they could feed them cookies fresh from the oven, and listen to what sort of day they’d had?
Mum was so wound up in her own projects she didn’t have time to listen to mine. At least Byron’s Mum talked to him after school – although this may have had more to do with the fact that her own life was so boring that she wanted to know all about his. Well, that’s what Dad said.
“Want a Milo, Col?’ asked Mum, making me feel guilty for having such nasty thoughts about her. “Your Dad’s done some baking, I think.”
Now seemed as good a time as any to tell her about my new idea.
“Hey, Mum?”
“Yeah, Col?”
“Where do you do your shopping?”
She got that ‘oh-no-here-he-goes-again’ look on her face, but I barged right on through it.
“At the supermarket like any normal person,” she said. “Why? Are supermarkets not politically correct any more or something?”
“No. Well, um, I don’t know if they are or not. But Mr Read was saying that there are other places where you can go and buy your food out of bins. You just take your own container along and fill it up with what you need. You can get all sorts. Like washing powder and peanut butter and everything. He said there’s a good one not far from here and it’s much cheaper and there’s no wasteful packaging.”
Mum sighed, a long weary ‘where-did-this-boy-come-from’ sigh and
looked at me like I’d just stepped off a spaceship or something.
“Look, Col,” she said. “I know this project you’re doing is important to you and I think you’re doing really well. It’s just that it’s not a good time, right now. I’m busy with work and shopping places like that take more effort. You’ve got to be organised. I can’t afford the time right now. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. One day when I’m not so busy I’ll give it a go.”
“Yeah, but if we don’t start making an effort soon Mr Read says it’ll be too late. Half of the world’s rain forests are gone already.”
But it was no use. Mum was watching Coronation Street and she’d stopped listening. I tried another tack.
“I told Mr Read about your hang-gliding and he says hang-gliding’s very environmentally friendly. You’re not wasting any resources at all.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m doing something right then,” she said huffily.
I thought Mum was fast becoming a lost cause and when she was in this sort of mood there was no point in talking to her. Instead I decided to use my powers of persuasion on Allie, who had just got a job delivering junk mail.
I explained very calmly and matter-of-factly that she was helping to destroy the rain forests by delivering useless pamphlets. They did nothing but clog people’s mail boxes and make them feel inadequate, because they couldn’t afford to buy the things in them anyway.
I thought I’d put my case very fairly and I’m sure any sensible planet-friendly person would have seen my point of view, and immediately chucked the job in. But my sister was not a sensible planet-friendly person and she was not willing to see my point of view at all.
In fact she went right off the deep end.
She said what she did in her spare time was none of my business and she couldn’t care less if it took 17 trees to make one tonne of paper. And how else was she going to earn the money to pay for modelling lessons? And besides, it gave her exercise and, according to her new diet book, she could burn up 560 calories an hour if she walked fast enough.