School Project

For the first seven chapters click here 🙂

Chapter 8 continues:

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At Besco’s Luke watched her closely with his project in mind.  To Mum it seemed like every time she reached for something he said,

“No!  Not that.  Get this one!”

She found it very trying but at the same time was impressed with her son’s commitment to the project and didn’t want to curb his enthusiasm for anything school-related.  She bit her tongue and cooperated with most his suggestions.

At the checkout, when the lady asked if she’d like any bags, Luke spoke out before she could answer in the affirmative.

“No thanks.  It’s very bad to get plastic bags.  They make pollution.  You should ban ’em.”  Then he put his pile of pillowcases onto the end of the checkout and started filling one with loose vegetables.  Mum flashed the checkout lady an embarrassed smile and said,

“School project.”

When the day came for the presentations to the class, Luke, because his surname began with W, was one of the last to present.  His peers were getting restless.  They had already sat through twenty seven similar presentations in which they were shown similar empty packets, cartons and bottles being thrown out that week by each family.  Those to be recycled included cereal boxes with their internal plastic bags, plastic milk bottles, plastic ketchup bottles, plastic shampoo bottles, Tetra Paks, glass wine bottles, beer bottles, plastic pop bottles, drink cans, food tins and the like.  Those to go to landfill included toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, brillo pads, polystyrene food trays, plastic straws and crisp packets.  Mrs Tebbut herself was having trouble staying awake at this stage and decided that next year she would get the class to work on a single collective presentation for a school assembly.

Luke waited for Susan Vickers to take her family’s waste off the presentation table and then he walked to the front and stood awkwardly facing his class.

“Ok Luke, how have you reduced waste in your household this week?” asked Mrs Tebbut.

Luke reached into his bag and put onto the table three paper bags, one glass 1 litre bottle and two empty baked beans tins.  He looked at the class and spoke loudly to conceal his nervousness.

“This is my waste for this week.  The yellow and blue paper bag what had oats in will be recycled; the brown paper bread bags will go on the compost; the bottle and the baked beans tins will be recycled.”

Relieved that it was over he waited for Mrs Tebbut to tell him to stand down.  She didn’t.

“That can’t be all,” she said, “I told you to show the class how much waste your household had produced and how you’d helped to reduce it.”

“I did.”

“This is all your family’s waste for a whole week?”

“This is the reduced waste what I made ’em reduce.  I don’t think it’s fair to include the things I told ’em not to buy.  They’re not my fault.”

“Luke, that wasn’t the project.  You’ve misunderstood.”

“I’ve done it fair.  It’s not fair to say I dint do well makin’ my family’s waste smaller if my family won’t do what I tell ’em.  It’s on’y fair to see what waste was made from choices I made ’em make.”

Mrs Tebbut couldn’t argue with that.

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story concludes tomorrow 🙂

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