Reverse Garbage - creative reuse in Marrickville
Why did a bunch of schoolteachers start Australia’s first green social enterprise?
What was it like in the 70s and 80s?
What’s the connection between Reverse Garbage and Sydney Mardi Gras?
Why is the social impact of Reverse Garbage as important as their environmental impact?
And, their most popular and weirdest donations?
Show Notes
Welcome
By Deborah Lennis, D’harawal woman, local Elder, and cultural advisor at Inner West Council.
Started by teachers [3:27]
Phil Nanlohy is one of the co-founders of Reverse Garbage.
In the 1970s, Phil was studying to be a teacher. Back then, state schools were chronically underfunded. Phil says that at many public schools, pieces of art paper would be counted out.
On his first classroom placement, Phil noticed that the school had a lot of resources – stuff like paper, cardboard and fabric. The teacher had asked local businesses to donate their scraps to the school. Phil says that these could be ‘enormously useful’ in the classroom and meant kids could learn more creatively. The idea stuck with him.
Getting a federal government grant
Judy Finlayson from the Community Network and Van Davies from the Teachers Federation helped secure a federal government grant that meant Reverse Garbage could start.
Phil and other teachers approach local businesses [4:34]
Phil says that the idea of Reverse Garbage was a ‘win-win’.
If they could get “good quality, clean, safe off-cuts that community members and schools and early childhood centres and churches and all sorts of community groups could use for their purposes, the businesses would save money.”
Education an early mission
Being set up by a bunch of teachers, it’s no surprise that education was an early mission of Reverse Garbage. Judy Reizes was employed as an education officer. She ran workshops and demonstrations and published books on craft made out of upcycled materials, along with Jon Lawrence. Reverse Garbage has run workshops for adults and kids ever since.
The combi van aka The Reverse Garbage Truck [6:25]
Alan Kessing was the coordinator for about a year. He had a Kombi van which became the Reverse Garbage Truck. Alan helped the Addison Road Community Centre to get formed and Reverse Garbage were one of the founding organisations.
Source: One Small World: The History of Addison Road Community Centre by Sue Castrique (2017)
Addison Road Community Centre [6:50]
The ‘Addi Road’ Community Centre, as it’s locally known, was a former army depot in Marrickville that the Whitlam government gifted to the community in 1975. At the time, Marrickville was one of the most ethnically diverse places in Australia. The Addison Road Community Centre was set up to nurture Australia’s new embrace of multiculturalism.
Reverse Garbage moves to Carrington Road [7:20]
Reverse Garbage moved and reopened in January 2022 in Carrington Road. It’s a part of Marrickville that’s still industrial, and now Reverse Garbage has small business, factories and artist studios as neighbours. Take a Carrington Road Marrickville Industrial Heritage walking tour or read about its industrial history in Carrington Road: Industrial Heritage Marrickville NSW by Louisa King and Ali Wright
Gumbramorra Swamp [7:35]
The land that Addy Road Community Centre sits on, and most of Marrickville and nearby Sydenham, has another name. Gumbramorra Swamp on Gadigal country. Dr Stephen Gapps says that before colonisation, it was a rich area of resources. Even though it’s referred to as a swamp, it was a waterway that was full of fish and wildlife, and important to the Gadigal Wangal people for its economic opportunity.
Pemulwuy [8:05]
Aboriginal resistance leader and warrior Pemulwuy grew up between the nearby Cooks and Georges River. Dr Stephen Gapps says that in the early Frontier Wars of the 1790s, Pemulwuy was ranging right across the inner west, and certainly would have gone through the Gubramorra Swamp. Read more about Pemulwuy in The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788-1817 by Stephen Gapps.
School holiday goodie bags for kids [8:50]
Helen Saad regularly visits Reverse Garbage, starting in 1976. She says that back then, “It was in a very old style warehouse building. It was like going into It was a cross between a jumble sale and a junk yard.”
She used to go there during school holidays to get a “goodie bag of offcuts and bits and pieces. They thought it was a wonderful find.”
'The Reverse Garbage truck arrives at the warehouse with more industrial scrap for educational recycling' in Education: Journal of the NSW Public School Teachers Federation 11 October 1978 on Trove.
'Reverse Garbage's warehouse contains all sorts of material for school use.' in Education: Journal of the NSW Public School Teachers Federation 11 October 1978 on Trove.
Making a tennis net from fabric scraps [12:15]
Helen Saad found an old diary entry from 1977. I made a tennis net out of old strips of white material from the Reverse Garbage truck. It worked out okay. I’m going to start to teach Steven and Karen how to play tennis these holidays.
When the children were asleep, she put the strips of white material on her lounge room floor. Over three nights in a row, she knotted the strips together to make “ what I thought turned out to be a rather wonderful imitation of a tennis net.”
George Saad, Helen’s husband, then used hardwood to secure the net in the backyard. Their kids and friends used the net for many years, and Helen credits it with helping her son become quite a good tennis player.
Peter Tully’s vision for Mardi Gras [14:05]
In Australia, the 70s were a time of social change. Reverse Garbage was part of that activism and so was the gay rights movement.
Sydney’s first Mardi Gras march was in 1978.
As its Creative Director from 1982 onwards, Peter Tully is said to have ‘invented Mardi Gras’ because of his vision for it to be a carnival, where people joined in and celebrated.
In an oral history by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras oral history project, artist and Mardi Gras Workshop coordinator Ron Smith said that Peter wanted people “to get into costume and then for the costumes to be obviously as high as possible and as fluoro as possible and as dramatic as possible.”
Peter Tully was ‘one of the original users of Reverse Garbage [15:40]
Ron Smith says that Peter Tully was one of the original users of the Reverse Garbage Truck and that Mardi Gras had a subscription.
He says, “Peter had tricks. You paid five bucks per garbage bag. But Peter didn’t take ordinary garbage bags. He took giant garden cleanup bags and he methodically stuffed them as solidly as possible to make that five bucks go as far as possible.”
Reverse Garbage materials at the Mardi Gras Workshop [16:40]
“There were enormous bins in the workshop of Reverse Garbage products, huge rolls of cigarette foil, and gold foils and fabric off cuts and leather scraps,” Ron Smith says.
Curator and cultural historian John Allen says that the workshop could then create “wonderful satirical, floats and costumes and make a point… about gay liberation and equality in an entertaining, colourful way that really took the Mardi Gras from a protest parade into an event of international cultural significance.“
The unofficial Reverse Garbage calendar [18:00]
Mardi Gras is the first event in the unofficial Reverse Garbage calendar.
CEO Kirsten Junor says that next is Easter, then Mother’s Day, Vivid Festival, Halloween and of course Christmas.
“So there’s this nice ebb and flow. We know what things will be coming in.”
As Sydney changes, so do the donations [18:40]
Originally Reverse Garbage collected a lot of donations from factories and small business.
Phil Nanlohy says that as the manufacturing base of Sydney moved out and was sent overseas, they needed to get more and more one-off donations. Now their donations tend to come from a mixture of manufacturing, light industry events, film and television.
The creative impact of Reverse Garbage [20:52]
Artists, sculptors, set designers and costume makers rely on Reverse Garbage to help bring big creative ideas to life.
Go to a makers market in Sydney, and you’ll see Reverse Garbage materials reused and reinvented. Go to the Cutaway at Sydney Biennale, an international festival of contemporary art, look up and see the art of Leeroy New, who sourced some of his materials from Reverse Garbage.
To see artists, costume designers and makers who use their materials, follow Reverse Garbage on Instagram.
The most popular item sold [21:22]
The hessian sack.
Gardeners love them for worm farms and weed matting. A hessian sack makes a good dog bed too.
The weirdest items donated [21:35]
28 chihuahua dogs. Teeth moulds. A coffin.
Recycle vs reuse [23:42]
CEO Kirsten Junor says she’s asked the question - But why not recycle? - a lot.
The answer she gives is that recycling takes energy.
“You're turning a single use item back into a single use item. So those resources have been shipped with the stuff in it, to the shop. Then you take it back to the recycling and it's the energy to go back and let's turn it into something else.”
She says it’s better to extend that life of that item, reusing it as many times as you can, again, before it either is disposed of properly or them invariably ends up going to landfill.
Kirsten says that they don't kid ourselves that some things at Reverse Garbage do end up in landfill, but that at least they are extending that life.
Social impact [24:35]
Something that may surprise you is the social impact of Reverse Garbage. They work with community justice, Centrelink and State Revenue to be a “safe, inclusive space” for people to volunteer.