Marce's Barge Blog #2

A word of warning; if you’re going to get an eco-warrior to do your recycling you’ll need to fundamentally rethink your attitude to bins. For most people, a bin is a one-directional repository for rubbish. Even for people like us at Arts Barge, who genuinely care about where all our waste ends up, the desired trajectory is always forwards (away from us) onto whatever alchemical processes turn our scrap into filthy lucre for someone else.
But ask an eco-warrior to sort out your crap and even when you’re sure you’ve stripped everything down to fully recyclable elements which you’ll never need to see again - paper, glass, cardboard and compostable plastic (AT GREAT EXPENSE) you’ll need to rethink, because there’s a whole other story to rubbish and its name is Mickey. ❤️
Yes, just when you think the nightmare of your own refuse is over, you’ll find Mickey Storey back, fresh from a thorough-going rummage of your skip, with news that no! Far from being obsolete, that pile of wasp-ridden, stinking detritus you ditched after last night’s gig is ready for new life!
Because Mickey’s waste-goal is Absolute Zero. As you start your next sixteen hour shift thinking that the mucky remnants of yesterday are behind you, Mickey turns up on his trike, grinning, with fourteen bags of what you ignorantly believed you had rid yourself of forever the day before. Compostable cups? Fab! But rather than composting Marce, how about this for a great idea (says Mickey) let’s gradually wash them up over the next twelve months, store them in bin-bags in your living room and ‘RE-USE ‘EM ALL MAN!!’ It’s hard to argue with his logic and I find myself nodding in knackered agreement to an idea that I don’t have the emotional strength to argue with. But inside I’m weeping, thinking, WHY?! WHY can’t we just bury them Mickey?! They make COMPOST for christ’s sake! Don’t hippies even like compost now???! I thought they revelled in that shit!
Seriously though, it’s been a joy to have Mickey on board. I challenge anyone to conjure up a mental image of him without seeing that smile - he could sell snow to Inuits with it. He’s also a bona fide York legend with a magical trailer that can carry anything from a disused sofa to a couple of pissed kids in need of a lift into town at midnight. Nothing is too much trouble. Nothing is beyond him.
And he’s a wit, our Mickey, so nothing gets past him either.
Not a single, sodding, solitary thing.😍