CHARLIE MGEE 

FUELS HIS TRUCK WITH FISH N’ CHIPS 

There’s no such thing as waste, only stuff in the wrong place. 
Now we gotta refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. 

These were the words I heard sung at a community garden permaculture party by Charlie and his band, The Formidable Vegetable Sound System. Quite possibly the only band to promote the joys of gardening and sustainability through dance and music. 

While most songs these days are about booty shaking and looking for love in the clubs, The Formidable Vegetable Sound System sing about life’s more important matters: kimchi, worm farms and that absurd thing we know as bottled water. 

Their song ‘No Such Thing As Waste’ is an ode to listeners to look at the superfluous of stuff we throw around as individuals, and to do our best to reduce it. And the band members certainly walk the talk. 

In an effort to keep the planet clean, Charlie went on tour in a slightly left-field, frugal kind of way. 

Instead of fancy hotels and jet planes, he bought an old truck and converted it into a tiny house. Instead of blowing money at petrol stations, he fuelled his truck with leftover vegetable oil kindly donated by fish n’ chip shops. Which it turns out, costs them to have it removed anyway. 

Big Blue Truck was Charlie’s third veggie-oil powered rig he owned, and the second tour he did on leftover cooking grease. 

He pinned his solo journey the ‘Smellin’ Like Fish n’ Chips tour.’ Though to be honest, one of Big Blue Truck’s first feeds was actually samosas and papadums. For those dry, desert towns too far from a catch from the sea, there was always a dirty alternative to sample the flavour of the day’s fuel — be it a drive-thru fast food joint or a greasy roadhouse pub. 

For Charlie, life on tour in the veggie oil truck was free, fun and environmentally friendly. Everything he advocates in his music. 

“There’s no such thing as waste because everything we “waste” we throw away,” he said. “And away isn’t actually a place, it just goes somewhere else. So there’s only stuff in the wrong place.”

Now before you get too excited and start hounding McDonald’s for the leftover oil from their fry vats, I should warn you… unless you do a decent amount of research, maybe don’t try this at home. 

It took Norbit the Veg Van, Bruce the Ute and Big Blue Truck a fair chunk of time to adjust to feeds from the friers.

Before Charlie could get them to eat their veg, there was a bit of work to be done on each vehicle. He had to reinstall special tanks, build DIY filtration stations, secure wiring after removing fire-fighter gear, create shopping bag filters, create sock filters, play with piping, play with draining, and instal centrifuge systems.

Eight or so months after all this grease-monkeying business and his muso-mobile’s were ready for fish n’ chips. Once the technical stuff was finished and he was on the road, all he had to do was filter out the chips and other yummy bits when he wanted to fill up. At times the centrifuge sounded like a jet engine, and there was a bit of hose spaghetti to refine every now and then, but it was all part of the adventure. 

On a few whiffs of veggie oil, Charlie made it to the end of his six-month, S-bend journey around Australia without spending a cent on petrol.

What he calls liquid gold and the music to his van, was what most would call rubbish. Rubbish that is usually transported and stored in a hidden nook of our beautiful earth.

The newest addition to the veggie truck collection is an old fire truck named Big Red Bev. She’s currently getting her last finishing touches done before she’s due to join the #StopAdani convoy in April alongside 2000 other planet patriots. 

And that’s Charlie. He gets a badge for loving on our earth and leaving behind no waste along the way… except for a few perfumed clouds of fish n’ chips.