This book was written thanks to the sponsorship of Urbaser S.A.
https://www.urbaser.com
2019 Author: M. Eloísa Caro Durán Illustrations: Cristina Vaquero Translator: Amanda D’Singh http://www.weeblebooks.com info@weeblebooks.com Madrid, Spain, October 2019
Licencia: Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/es/
At Urbaser, every day we work to improve people's quality of life by providing efficient, innovative and responsible services. In this respect, and as part of our Social Action Policy, we implement initiatives to raise environmental awareness, such as this book, which seeks to teach children about the importance of keeping cities clean and about the work carried out by the people involved in this task. We want to raise awareness of the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) and to transmit the message that, between us, we can look after the environment both now and in the future.


Trash, the rubbish monster
Urbaclin was the cleanest city in the world. Its streets smelt of pine trees, frost and vanilla ice cream. All of the waste generated by its inhabitants was transformed into new objects at several recycling plants or energy needed to keep the city operational. However, from one day to the next, something unexpected happened. Life in Urbaclin appeared to have come to a standstill. Due to a lack of fuel, no vehicles travelled down its streets and the traffic lights were permanently switched off because energy no longer reached them. The streets were so dirty that even the rats had had enough of the rubbish piled up by the roadside. The air was unfit to breathe and smelt like manure, rotten waste and out-ofdate stink bombs.
In the face of such an emergency, Molly, a girl of roughly your age, invited her friends to the park with the neverending slides. Before she opened her mouth to speak, she breathed out, and her perfectly trimmed, straight, brown fringe, moved for a moment before returning to its usual place. “I have something very important to tell you,” and without further ado and to her friends’ astonishment, she said,
“The rubbish monster, Trash, has arrived in the city.” Sitting on the saddle of his red bicycle, Rhys was listening intently; the ice cream that he was holding in his hand began to melt and a white cream-flavoured ribbon trickled down his black skin. “Oh, he’s the one who has transformed the city!” exclaimed Rosie as she tied the shoelaces of her pink trainers.
“It’s true, everything is really dirty,” added Ryan, whilst nibbling on his sandwich. “Yes, the ground is covered in paper, bags and cigarette butts, but the worst thing is that there are no street sweepers, they have all disappeared,” added Molly. “That’s true, and where are they?” asked Rhys, who was always a bit slow on the uptake and was afraid that he might have missed something. “The rubbish monster has locked them up along with all the other cleaning staff, the recycling plant workers and the refuse truck drivers.” “Are you sure?” asked Ryan.
“Without any shadow of a doubt, I saw him last night: He was rolling triumphantly amongst the rubbish, throwing empty cans at the trees and rotten lettuces at the cats who dared to walk across the rooftops. He was even throwing dirty nappies at a defenceless stray dog. It was appalling.” “And what does he look like? Is he as sinister as we imagine?” asked Rosie. “He’s a lot more revolting and gruesome,” answered Molly. “He’s an immense, evil, creaking, black, metallic monster with small, sparkling, white eyes, which eats rubbish.”
“Oh!” they all exclaimed at once. “So, the more rubbish there is, the better it is for him,” deduced Rhys. “That’s right.”
“How awful!” “We have to save the city!” said Molly. “Absolutely!” replied her friends. Molly believed that she had convinced them that the city was in danger and that their role was fundamental; however, every one of her friends had joined the cause for rather peculiar and yet no less valid reasons. “I don’t like walking, and if there is too much rubbish on the roads, the bus service cannot run,” said Rhys.
“There won’t be energy for the boiler either, and I hate cold showers,” Ryan pointed out. “My mum won’t let me go out unless I wear this horrible mask,” said Rosie, producing it from her trouser pocket.
Following these clear explanations, the Anti-Trash Brigade was formed.
Reduce Once they agreed the objectives of the Anti-Trash Brigade Constitution, the brave youngsters discussed what they could do to about the threat posed by Trash. “What can we do?” asked Ryan. “Well, the
first thing that I think we should do is to try and reduce the amount of rubbish, because we don’t know how much time we will be without the cleaners,” explained Molly.
“And how will we achieve that?” asked Ryan. “By consuming less in the first place, just what is absolutely necessary,” Molly replied. Rhys did not like the idea much because he loved eating crisps, and he was pretty sure that they did not count as being something necessary. Molly explained her plan to them in detail, and Rosie loved the idea.
They went to each of their houses and collected the material that they needed. They set up a workshop in Rosie’s bedroom and it was there that they prepared everything to implement their campaign, which was to be called ‘Are you sure you need it?’ “It’s turned out perfectly, just as we designed it,” said Rosie, totally satisfied with the result. The following morning, they filled up some large rucksacks which they distributed between them and headed for the city’s busiest shopping centre, where each of them selected a shop. Molly went into the supermarket and immediately picked her target: a stout lady whose head resembled a giant stork’s nest and who dragged her feet as she walked, holding on to a trolley with her sweaty hands.
The lady with the puffy hair stopped in front of the bottles of water, decided upon a pack and put it in her trolley. Molly immediately said to her:
“Are you sure that you need that? You can use tap water, that way you wouldn’t need to throw the bottles away.” The lady with the puffy hair gave her a questioning look and, not really understanding why the girl had invaded her space or why she was talking to her, offered up a forced smile and continued with her shopping. The next aisle appeared to be her favourite; she started to smell the fabric conditioners one after another, the rose-scented one, the one that smelt like fruits of the forest…, until Molly said to her: “That product isn’t essential either.”
The lady with the puffy hair was starting to get angry. “Why was that young girl following her and criticising everything that she did?” “Why are you following me?” she asked. “I’m not following you; we are just giving advice on how to reduce consumption. That way we will reduce the amount of waste there is and we will be closer to defeating Trash, the rubbish monster”. “What monster? What nonsense! Have you all gone crazy?” “The street sweepers have all disappeared and…” “Indeed, but there is now a team of investigators that is trying to find out what happened. There’s no monster. There will be a reasonable explanation. They are probably fed up because little brats like you don't stop dropping litter." The lady with the puffy hair put the bottle back, frowned and, turning her back on Molly, she continued on her way. Molly had won her first battle, the bottle remained on the shelf, but only just because, in her anger, the lady with the puffy hair had almost knocked the whole lot over.
Molly continued to test the lady’s patience. The lady with the puffy hair stopped in front of the pulses section and started to pick up packets of lentils and beans, but Molly shouted at her, making her jump:
“No, it’s better to buy them loose, that way you don’t have to throw the packaging away.” The lady with the puffy hair took a deep breath and, irritation mounting inside her, she sat down on the floor before she keeled over from exasperation. Before she had time to react, Molly took several bags of various colours and sizes from her huge rucksack that the Anti-Trash Brigade had made out of old clothes and which had turned out extremely well. “Here, you go. The small ones are for loose pulses and the big ones are for general shopping, that way you won’t need to use plastic bags. As I’m sure you already know, they are one of the worst kinds of waste that exist. There are more bags than fish in our oceans. Plastic bags are only used for a few minutes and yet they take five hundred years to decompose. Just think, if the monster is here for a long period of time, we will end up suffocated by plastic bags.”
The lady with the puffy hair opened her eyes widely in surprise and a change came over her so that instead of appearing angry, her face now signalled agreement. The truth is that the bags were really original and had caught her attention. She left the shop in a happy mood and of course, she now always takes them with her when she goes shopping. Not only that, she sorted through the clothes that she no longer wore and made some new bags to give to her friends.
Rosie, Rhys and Ryan also approached customers in other shops using the campaign slogan, ‘Are you sure you need it?’. They too came up against difficult shoppers who also loved the cloth bags. The campaign had been successful, and they were very happy as a result.
“Yes, we did it!”
Reuse Several days later, the group of boys and girls met up again to come up with another plan. It was important to keep fighting against Trash. “So, we’ve made good progress, but it’s not enough,” said Molly interrupting her friends’ celebrations. “What do you mean?” asked Rhys, shrugging his shoulders questioningly. “We have significantly reduced the quantity of rubbish, but Trash is still strong. I’ve come up with a new way of ensuring that the amount of waste does not increase further; we
must reuse what we already have.”
Molly explained to them how the second campaign would work and they all agreed with her. They called the campaign, ‘Give your objects a second life’. “Yes, we’re going to save the city!” they shouted.
The following day, the four friends turned up at their school. That day was not going to be a normal day of classes, it promised to be much more fun. The Anti-Trash Brigade rounded up their classmates in the playground in order to set them a challenge. Molly stood on a bench, but there was so much noise that it was impossible to make herself heard. Her friend Ryan, the strongest member of the class, picked up a stone block and placed it on top of the bench: standing on top of it Molly was now more visible and she started to talk to them all.
“We have to bring Trash down.” “Yes, yes, yes!” they all responded enthusiastically.
“I suggest that during the course of the day, every one of you gives a second life to an object that you don’t use any more.” “That way there will be less rubbish and we will be weakening the monster.” The pupils thought that this was a wonderful idea and they got to work right away.
They searched every nook and cranny of the school, looking for objects that were no longer used and which would be thrown away sooner or later.
The classrooms were transformed into makeshift craft workshops where the children let their imaginations run wild. Rosie had a lot of fun with the guys in Class 4B, transforming the keys from an old computer keyboard into pretty hairbands which she of course painted pink to go with her trainers.
As dusk fell, a bell rang to signal the end of the allotted time and the pupils came together in the school hall to present their innovative creations.
This time, the Anti-Trash Brigade sat at a table brought from one of the classrooms. A curious Molly rested her arms on the table and held her face in her hands, smiling as always, as she awaited news of everyone’s creations. One by one, each student came up to the table with their reused object. Max, one of the oldest pupils, had taken the tower unit from an old computer in the staff room and transformed it into an original mailbox. Rory had turned a broken bicycle that had been left in corner of the sports centre, into an
plant pot holder.
attractive
Conor had transformed some old wooden ladders that were lying in the garden into a practical shelving unit. Julian and Mary had made
several sets of beakers using bottles and tins.
a
Bronwyn had drawn brightlycoloured circles, triangles and squares and in the centre of them there was a phrase written in a young child’s handwriting:
There were some fantastic ideas that surprised everyone, but the best was yet to come. Bronwyn, the youngest girl in the school, was the last to come up, and she said rather shyly: “I don’t know how to make such pretty things, but I thought I could maybe help like this. I took these sheets of paper that only had a few numbers written on the top of them out of the waste paper bins, and I designed these posters for the notice boards around the city. We must
reuse things to bring
Trash down
“We must reuse things to bring Trash down.” Her classmates stood up from their chairs and started to clap. Bronwyn did not know why they were clapping; the fact was that there were ideas that were We must much better presented than reuse things to bring hers. She listened to Molly Trash with an astonished look on her down face, trying to find an answer.
X
“Very good, little Bronwyn! In addition to the interesting posters that will be very useful to us, you have reused something as basic as paper.”
“We must not throw away sheets of paper that are barely used.” “There are many that still have space enough on which to write the shopping list, to solve a maths problem, to draw the sea, to write a poem or to make a poster like yours. What’s more, after all of these uses, we can still use them to make a box, an envelope or a fan. And finally, we give them yet another life at our recycling plants, by turning them into paper or cardboard, and that way there is no need to fell more trees that could continue to live and oxygenate the air that we breathe.”
Those words, together with the endless applause, turned into an improvised prize which, rather curiously, went to the simplest example of reuse, one which was, nevertheless, just as important as the rest.
Molly and her friends repeated the session in all of the city’s schools and each child spread the campaign amongst their parents and relatives. Following the success achieved in schools, the Anti-Trash Brigade went out into the neighbourhood to convince its residents to reuse their old junk and not throw it away, so as to avoid buying new things. The success was immediate, and this motivated them to continue fighting against the rubbish monster.
Every item that was reused in Urbaclin further annoyed Trash. He was becoming angrier and angrier, particularly with the brigade of boys and girls who had organised the reuse campaign.
Recycle After another week of helping to reuse all of the things that they found, Molly realised that there was still something else that was needed to finally defeat Trash. So she summoned the Brigade once again in order to speak to them: “The first thing that I want to do is to congratulate you all for the good work you did during our second campaign ‘Give your objects a second life,’ Molly began. “Yes, it was a total success!” exclaimed Rosie. “Yes, we have made yet more important progress, but it’s still not enough,” stated Molly. “What do you mean?” replied Ryan this time. “There is still one more issue that we must address. As you know, every time someone wrongly recycles something, they are giving strength to Trash, the same as if they were recharging his batteries. As such, we
must carry out another campaign, a recycling campaign. There are many grow-ups people who still don’t know how to recycle and I have thought of a fun way of resolving this.”
”Yes, we’re going to save the city!” shouted Rosie, Ryan and Rhys in unison.
The four friends made their way to the largest square in Urbaclin. They prepared everything that they needed and began to challenge everyone that passed through the square. The elderly soon fell into their carefully-laid trap. “We breathe life into the monster if we don’t recycle properly? But which monster are you talking about?” replied a lady with a shrill voice and bulging eyes. “What do you mean we don’t know how to recycle?” added a gentleman wearing a jacket who went on to give an improvised recycling class in the middle of the square, surrounded by his loyal followers. “Cartons, tins and plastics go in the yellow containers; glass bottles go in the green container; paper and cardboard go in the blue container; dangerous waste, such as paint and chemical products, goes in the red container; organic waste, such as fruit peel, goes in the brown container, and everything else goes in the grey container.” “That’s it!” applauded those present enthusiastically. “Although you must be careful,” Molly continued, “because in other cities the colours of the containers are different. You have to be wellinformed and read the labels of each container properly before placing anything in it, especially if you are in a different place.”
Molly went on to explain why Urbaclin had been one of the cleanest cities in the country for so long. “Urbaclin is the cleanest city in the world, it has received numerous awards,” a bald gentleman emphasised. “So you are wrong, you whippersnappers.”
“Alright, if you are so sure, you won’t mind taking part in our game in order to prove it,” said Molly. The people who were in the square agreed. Each one of them picked up a cardboard box and went round a circuit collecting the rubbish they came across that was suitable for the recycling colour marked on their box: blue, yellow or green.
The first three participants completed the circuit very quickly and, when they finished, they revealed the contents of their boxes, convinced that they had done it perfectly. The man wearing a jacket went first. “A paper envelope, good; a cereal box, good,” said Molly, in her role as chief judge of the makeshift court, as she was shown the items contained in the blue box. But suddenly, a resounding, “No!” silenced the square. “What do you mean ‘no’?” replied the man defiantly.
“This pizza box is totally stained with oil and, as such, it should be placed in the grey container, either that or you should cut out the small clean area, which could go in the blue container, and the rest would go in the grey container.” The man wearing a jacket was surprised when he heard such a clear explanation, and had no other option but to look at the ground and accept his defeat.
The next participant was the lady with a shrill voice whose box
was green.
“A beer bottle, good; a milk bottle, good,” confirmed Molly, as she removed each item from the box. And suddenly a loud “No!” resonated throughout the square once more.
“This broken glass doesn’t go in the green container, but in the grey one.” “Oh come on, why is that?” replied the lady angrily. “And more than that, this bottle is not correctly recycled either because you should have removed the cap, which is made from another material.” The lady turned away angrily and it took her a good while to accept that she had lost the challenge.
Finally, they examined the bald gentleman’s yellow
box,
as he stood there smiling and rubbing his hands together believing that he had won. “A juice carton, good; a water bottle, good; a plastic bag, good.” The bald gentleman continued to smile rather smugly, and then, suddenly, Molly uttered the dreaded two-letter word whilst holding up a plastic toy.
“No, this is incorrect. It has a small engine inside that is made of metal, and as such, it should be taken to the nearest rubbish dump so that it can undergo specific waste management.”
It led to a heated discussion in which everyone present gave their opinion, but in the end, the grown-ups people had no option but to accept their clear and heavy defeat. The four friends continued with the challenge for the rest of the day and, despite the fact that the participants were bad losers, it was great fun, particularly because, at least for once, the grown-ups were wrong. “Well, that was a total success!” said Rosie. “I think that the grown-ups people have finally learnt how to recycle correctly!”
Celia’s plan Molly knew that those triumphs were not enough, and as such, the following day, she arranged to meet her friends in the park with the never-ending slides again. “With the 3R’s campaigns that we have implemented, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, we have managed to reduce waste generation and, most importantly, to weaken Trash enormously. But last night, whilst everyone was sleeping, I saw him again, and you cannot even imagine what he was doing: he was turning the containers upside down and mixing up the recycled rubbish. As a result, it is only a matter of time until he becomes strong again and even starts to roam through other cities, looking for more and more rubbish until he takes control of the entire universe. Worse still, he has still not released the cleaners; so we have to take him on directly.” “And what do you suggest we do? This is crazy! Trash is much more powerful than us and…,”
Rosie had still not finished what she was saying when Rhys interrupted her and exclaimed, pointing towards the source of the alarm:
“Look! A street cleaner!” “It can’t be!” said Molly in surprise. It was Cecilia, the neighbourhood’s small, young street cleaner, dressed in her characteristic green work overalls. She was dumb, but they understood each other perfectly as Molly knew sign language pretty well. They greeted each other from afar. Cecilia put her cart and broom to one side and said in sign language: “I managed to escape from Trash, but more importantly than that, I worked out his weak point and how we can defeat him.” “Oh, that’s fantastic!” said Molly.
She passed this news on to her friends at once, since they had been looking on sceptically. “She’s just a street cleaner, she doesn’t count,” said Ryan. “Why not?” replied Molly angrily. “How can you say that? She’s a person just like everyone else, an outstanding professional who cleans streets day after day; you’ve already seen what happens without the street cleaners, they’re essential to the cleaning and recycling chain. What’s more, she’s my friend and I’m sure she knows what we have to do.” “That’s right,” said Cecilia in sign language. “I have a plan, but we’ll need as much help as possible.” Molly, who didn’t spare any effort, recruited virtually all of the neighbourhood’s children one by one; she got hold of a megaphone and invited them all to one of the nearby squares, next to one of the biggest recycling plants. Hardly anyone stayed at home, and children of all ages crammed into the huge building in order to hear what Molly had to say.
Rhys had an important job: each time that someone entered or left the building, he had to open the door a few millimetres, the rest of the time the doors had to remain completely closed. What was happening inside was a big secret. No one could give any clues about what was being said. It was essential that not even a single detail reached Trash. After several days of maintaining the mystery, with boys and girls sneaking in and out of the building, everything was ready, and all of the doors could be opened wide.
However, when the time came, there was an unexpected setback. Rhys, the person responsible for opening the doors, had lost the keys. “But how can you be so scatterbrained? Think hard about where you last left them,” everyone said. Rhys was feeling the pressure, everyone was looking at him, they were desperate to open the doors. They began an exhaustive search and suddenly, Ryan shouted: “Here they are!” He had found them hanging on the handlebars of his red bicycle and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the big doors to the building were opened. What was about to happen was unprecedented
R3
R3 “Proceed, R3!” said Rosie acting as the master of ceremonies. It was at that moment that an enormous robot made out of empty drink cans appeared. Molly herself was operating it from a seat located on R3’s head. Before setting off, before taking the first step, Molly let out a rallying cry. “We’re going to save Urbaclin!” “Yes, we’re going to save Urbaclin!” they all chanted together. R3 was as huge as an unconquerable tower, one of its feet alone was bigger than several houses put together. It had remained bent over in the warehouse, and it had been forced to knock down several walls in order to make its way out.
R3 started to walk. Cecilia and the other children accompanied it as if it were a grand carnival procession. The children had made their own clothes, also from recycled materials. They wore original outfits made out of newspaper and eye-catching earrings made out of drink can pull rings. They played musical instruments such as drums made out of cans, tambourines and rattles made out of saucers, maracas made out of cans and plastic bottles and xylophones made out of small glass bottles. The noise that they made brought the entire city to its feet. It was like a huge recycling festival. The people looked on in bewilderment from the pavement which shook with each step that R3 took.
The boisterous procession advanced down the grand avenues towards a former rubbish dump where the children knew that the rubbish monster was hiding. An immense, black, stinking mass started to move. The deafening walk of R3 had alerted the monster to their approach, and when he saw the crowd of people appear in the distance, he cast his bright and menacing eyes on that singular army and started to throw rubbish at it as if each piece was a missile. The children, who were prepared for this violent reaction, dodged the monster’s attacks and did not retreat even a little bit. Instead, something unbelievable happened, the total opposite of what you might have imagined. As the children and R3 got closer, the rubbish monster began to tremble and to tremble so clearly that all of them noticed his reaction.
“What’s wrong with him?” they asked in amazement. “Maybe he’s short circuiting,” some of them joked. “Or he’s been poisoned,” some others said. The fact is that the children were not armed, and the robot had no missiles, but the children knew that they had something that was much more lethal in his eyes. Trash only had one weak spot, the one which Cecilia, the street cleaner had discovered. Trash was scared, to the point of phobia or panic, of any recycled object. As such, the closer R3, made entirely from recycled material, and the children, who were dressed in recycling, got to him, the more he trembled. This trembling increased until it reached the stage that the screws that held his hands, feet and arms in place started to come loose and he suddenly fell to the ground.
The children sensed their victory and started to shout excitedly. “Hooray, we’ve done it!” “At last!” said Molly happily, “And it’s all thanks to Cecilia,” she added looking directly at Ryan, who had learnt the lesson that you cannot judge someone without knowing them, or as in this case, based solely on their profession. Ryan ran towards Cecilia and lifted her up onto his shoulders. She could barely maintain her balance but raised her arms triumphantly. Horrible Trash was now just a pile of scrap metal which they would of course recycle, transforming it into other objects.
More importantly, at the very instant when Trash’s bright red eyes went out, the city’s street cleaners began to appear from the other side of the hill in their green overalls, along with the recycling plant staff. They went back to work immediately and it was not long before the street cleaners left the streets as clean as they had previously been. The recycling plant staff also resumed their activities and people could heat their homes once more. The rubbish piled up on the roadside was gradually removed and, after a few days, the buses and cars could move freely around the city again. The air became more breathable and the rats had to pack their bags and head somewhere else. The city organised a big party to celebrate the return to normality and there was music as well as sweet treats and lots of rides.
Urbaclin was now a better city than it had been in the past. Thanks to the environmental campaigns that had been carried out, its inhabitants no longer generated so much waste, they used the recycling containers properly and reused the objects that they no longer needed, transforming them into other items that were of use. This was all possible because the citizens now helped and collaborated with each other.
THE END
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