The Festival of Trash a Feature by Nik (Nik B.) Nik drops the screwdriver to ponder on socially conscious trash... It's that special time of the year again. A time when the air fills with the piquant odours of warped chipboard and dusty, worn-out furniture. At time when forlorn ranks of broken fridges and banged-up electrical goods line the streets. A time when impoverished students pick over suburbia's offerings in the hope of scavenging something fixable. Yes, it's trash collection day again. A time to purge the house of all things old, obsolete and unwanted. Trash day is a ritual, a sort of formalised spring cleaning; but more than this, it's a festival- a celebration of trash. The festival is marked by a steady migration of junk from house to street. Clunky and decrepit televisions drag their tired frames into direct sunlight for the first time since the fall of the Whitlam government. Grimy ovens the size of a small Buick hunch dejectedly at the roadside. Inexplicable household items from the 1970's gather in small, sad groups, next to the warped fibro cabinets that used to house them. A madness grips the population during the festival of trash, striking according to age, gender, and marital status. Wives, for instance, tirelessly roam suburban houses, appraising furniture and electrical appliances alike with a callous eye, marking the old and sickly for extermination. Some even brave the hallowed ground of the household workshop, shed or garage (all are deconsecrated for a few short days). Once inside, said wives feast upon the gutted televisions, doorless refrigerators, greasy old ovens, or indeed any other mystical paraphernalia they come across. Nearby males are inevitably cajoled to cart this offering to the front lawn. Fathers and husbands, on the other hand, strategically withdraw to dens and studies to skulk and mutter (while secretly plotting new ways to accrue junk). Students (particularly university students) are especially prone to the most debilitating form of trash festival madness- a kind of socially-acceptable kleptomania. For miles around, panel vans and station wagons are mobilised. Students form into small packs of three or four to prowl suburban streets looking for salvageable items. Those who don't own cars tote their finds home by whatever means possible- some of the younger students can be seen, ant-like, carrying baroque pieces of machinery several times larger than themselves. The festival of trash doesn't suspend other forms of suburban madness- rather, it works around them. Occasionally, this leads to some serious antagonism. The most violent conflicts usually occur when certain homeowners (suffering from extreme cases of the "my-home-is-my-castle" mentality) spot marauding students on the front lawn. Suburbia is an intensely territorial place- just look at the number of neighbourhood disputes over fence lines, shared plumbing, and just who really owns that mango tree. This territoriality doesn't end with property lines- it extends even to the junk on the front lawn. Regardless of the fact it will be carted off as landfill the next morning, some suburbanites are positively militant about their trash piles. During the festival of trash, bizarrely amusing skirmishes can be observed between aggressively illogical homeowners and bewildered students. Surely, these students must be mad to brave such dangers! However, there may be a method to the students' madness. It's surprising what is thrown away in the quest for bigger, better, newer. The majority of electrical and electronic goods these days don't wear out- they become obsolete. Many of the goods on offer from the side of the road are in decent working order, and have only one or two minor faults. For example, at the most recent trash collection day, I (yes, one of those students) managed to score a perfectly-working VCR, and a TV that required only minor repair. Sure, they were of ancient '70s manufacture - about as ergonomic as a baleen whale on roller-skates - but I didn't pay a cent for them. Even though they weren't the latest model, they suited my purposes fine. Our festival of trash is as Bacchanalian as a Roman orgy. Much as we may enjoy it, the festival is a symptom not only of our society's rampant consumerism but of the uneven distribution of wealth. Something's amiss when the conformably well off can afford to throw away luxury goods in perfect working order while much of the world struggles to meet basic daily needs. At least the students recognise this, even if their efforts at recycling are motivated more by self interest than by any sense of altruism... * Created on Tue, 30 Sep 1997 and last modified on Mon, 10 Nov 1997.

LOUDonline - http://www.loud.net.au - Fri, 10 Apr 1998