G’day! I’m Roly, and I’ve been cleaning up the beach by bribing people with coffee.
Picking up rubbish probably doesn’t sound too appealing, but what if I made you your favourite coffee, then we picked up rubbish together? This is Emu Parade. I’ve been making coffee for a living for 14 years. It’s an amazing feeling to hand someone a coffee that has been made perfectly for them. And on my days off, I love picking up rubbish. Weird, I know. But I do, especially at the beach and around coastal environments.
I think of the ocean as a super organism that sustains all life, but it’s under attack from pollution, and the microplastics that much of it turns into. Rubbish on the beach will break down at different rates, but it’s all going to the same end point. The ocean. From there it enters our food, and then it enters our bodies.
Imagine at a restaurant, instead of seasoning with salt and pepper, someone stood over you with a pepper grinder full of plastic, sprinkling it all over your dish? That’s where we’re headed. Our lives depend on combatting the microplastics problem. Picking up rubbish is a direct, straightforward thing we can all do, to connect with the problem and with each other. That’s why I’m combining my two passions: making coffee and picking up rubbish. Welcome to Emu Parade.
Who’s Trish?
Perhaps you’re wondering, how will I get cafe-quality coffee to the beach? Well, meet Trish. She’s an old fire engine that I’ve converted to run on used deep fryer oil instead of diesel, and I’m building into the ultimate clean-up catering truck. I collect waste oil from restaurants, filter it in my garage, and then run it through some modifications that I made to Trish’s fuel system. The next stage is installing coffee machinery, which will run off batteries that get recharged as I drive from clean-up to clean-up, burning recycled plant oils instead of fossil fuel.
This is going to be a professional espresso set up, with commercial equipment and a capable set of hands ready to cater for hundreds of people at a time. We won’t be using any single use packaging; people will bring their own cups, otherwise I’ve got a huge collection of recycled glass jars to use too.
Emu Parade’s going to be pretty simple. I’ll share details of when and where I’ll be parking up in Trish on the Northern Beaches, and you can come down, spend an hour with me having a coffee and picking up some rubbish, and leaving the coast a lot cleaner than we found it. But there’s still a long way to go before I can get back to full scale cleanups. The last piece of the puzzle is the battery system to run the coffee machine. These are wildly expensive. About 30 grand expensive…
How you can help
So, I hate having to ask, but I need your help. I’ve spent all my money to get Trish to where she’s at now. Literally no money left. So please, if you can contribute towards bringing Emu Parade to life, please visit my GoFundMe page gofundme.com/f/emuparade
Your donation will make a world of difference, and means I’ll be able to see you down at the beach for an Emu Parade even sooner. Great coffee, a meaningful clean-up, and some quality time by the sea with my best mate Trish.
Help Roly and Trish get to work by donating at gofundme.com/f/emuparade