When Lismore man Paul Jessup sees a piece of rubbish lying in the gutter, he can’t himself: he has to pick it up.
The unusual thing about Paul is what he does with the junk he finds. Instead of popping it in the nearest bin, he stashes it in his pocket and takes it home to his workshop, where he pulls it apart and separates into its individual parts before placing it in storage.

Paul’s reasons for doing so relate to his values: he is a dedicated environmentalist and a passionate Greenie who doesn’t just talk the talk – he walks the walk. His lifelong passion for collecting junk is helping save the planet.

“I was about seven years old when I first started collecting stuff,” the 58 year-old says. “I was walking home from school, and I saw a suitcase full of lead that the Telecom man had left behind, so I picked it up and took it home.”

For Paul, it was a defining moment; a rude awakening. “I realised just how much reusable, valuable stuff humans discard on a daily basis.”

When Paul uses the word ‘valuable’ to describe his box of telephone wire, he’s not referring to its dollar value. “In terms of the cost to the Earth’s natural resources, these items are worth a fortune. People fail to think about how much energy goes into making things…? how many barrels of oil this stuff sucks up in order to be produced ?”, he explains.

The common household computer is another prime example. “People sit around tapping away on their computer keyboards with no clue what’s in them; it definitely costs more to make these machines than the amount of energy they use throughout their short lives.”

Rather than sending these things to landfill or sticking them down the drain, Paul stacks them in his workshop under his East Lismore home, where he’s lived with his partner Jude, a local high school teacher, for the last ten years.

Jude says his desire to collect all this stuff comes from his basic belief in environmental sustainability. “He has a wonderful mind, but he suffers from an illness that affects his mobility, so it means that he works from home and while he’s not doing the housework, he’s out and about, on his bike or walking around town, collecting things. He’s physically incapable of going anywhere without finding stuff that people have dropped on the ground and discarded.

“He doesn’t pick up litter, per se,” she says, showing me around the workshop under their house. “He’s particularly fascinated by metal and timber,” she adds, pointing to rack upon rack of tools, magnets, chains, windscreen wipers, keyrings, containers, pegs and even empty spray paint cans (he collects these for the steel marbles inside them).  “I think it’s fantastic and I support his ethos, though I don’t like it much when he’s poking around in bins.”

Paul says what he does is about valuing what resources we have and making them useful again. “Stuff is being uselessly wasted and there’s no reason for it.”

“Paul has this theory,” says Jude, “that the way humans are exhausting our planet’s economically exploitable resources, rubbish tips will eventually be mined for the gold and copper in appliances like CD players… so you never know – we could be sitting on a gold mine!”

The sad reality, the couple concede, is that while all these resources keep stacking up under their home and aren’t being used or reused, Paul hasn’t really saved them at all.

It would be wonderful if there was a way for us to market it especially given the amount of time and labour he’s put into it stripping it down and organising the valuable parts,” Jude said. “It can’t end up in the dump… doing that would defeat the whole purpose of having it here in the first place.”

Written by Philippa Swift