CommunityAction For People and Planet

CommunityAction for People and Planet. P.O. Box 68, Motueka. Phone 021 174 0400 email : duncaneddy@yahoo.com

A year ago, almost unnoticed, one of the best-known community campaigners in the South Island hung up his slate in Motueka.

Duncan Eddy's arrival scarcely raised an eyebrow; in Tasman district dreadlocks, beard and bare feet are commonplace.

However 12 months later one of his campaigns is gaining support from a growing number of councils around the country and even Tasman's mayor has found him impossible to ignore.

It's quite a record for a high school dropout on a precarious income, whose office was once a toilet cubicle.

Now 31, Eddy was raised in Invercargill before the Southland renaissance. All the exuberance of Tim Shadbolt, tourists, tertiary students paying no fees and the revitalised dairy industry had yet to arise. The district was a byword for decline and Eddy was a typical byproduct.

He has an honours degree and is studying part-time for a master's degree, but in the mid-1990s he was a beneficiary who had ``totally lost interest''.

He sat Sixth Form Certificate and passed nothing, left school with a couple of School Certificate credits, went on the dole and, on weekends, went out drinking.

``You've got to take responsibility for your own life but I think a lot of intelligent kids get bored through lack of challenges in school,'' Eddy says.

Partly, at least, he was rescued by reading. Precociously literate even at primary school, as an angry young man he began to read a lot of books.

American Jack Kerouac and other writers of the 1950s beat generation inspired him.

``I became aware of some of the social roots of individual discontent.''

The activist in Eddy stirred when, as a journalism trainee, he was barred from using a computer for refusing to have his hair cut. Instead he went to Otago University, qualifying for entry as an adult student because he had turned 21. He soon established a reputation for making a nuisance of himself.

``What really spurred me to be an activist was friends getting their doors kicked in, getting arrested, because they smoked a bit of pot,'' he says.

``I was rebelling against the fact that people who were getting on with their lives, studying to improve themselves, were being oppressed by a law that I didn't see as helping those who needed help anyway.''

He spent time on the national board of Norml, the organisation that advocates decriminalising marijuana. He funded the GE-Free Dunedin Coalition and was arrested for attaching signs to products in a supermarket, warning customers about genetically modified foods.

Somehow he emerged from university with a degree, no criminal record and a determination to mix activism with optimism.

``Too many people are promoting pessimism and that unnecessarily disempowers people,'' Eddy says. ``We live in a Pacific paradise, a democracy where we can participate regardless of our social or economic background.''

He spent several years working for Greenpeace and other organisations, travelling through Australia and New Zealand.

In November 2004 he moved to Motueka, where he had worked on orchards with friends as a student.

Last February , after converting a disused toilet into a tiny office, he founded CommunityAction for People and Planet in the old Post Office building in Motueka.

It reflected a major change in approach for Eddy , away from national-level activist groups to local campaigns that nevertheless may have wider effects.

He left Norml two years ago - although he still supports its aims - and now works for Greenpeace only when his cashflow needs a boost.

CommunityAction is a registered non-profit organisation, eligible for grants that support its environmental campaigns, rough-and-ready website and magazine, a quarterly freebie with a few local advertisers.

The organisation comprises Eddy , supported by five friends who help out occasionally. After a year in operation, its influence has been disproportionate.

Eddy has restricted CommunityAction to four campaigns: for strong community-level representation; refundable deposits to encourage glass bottle reuse; encouraging smokers to put cigarette butts in rubbish bins; and keeping butts and other toxic waste out of waterways.

With glass-recycling outlets already overfull, Eddy believes one solution is to reinstate the deposit that once made reusable bottles worth a few cents each.

Instead of pressuring the Government to bring back the deposit, he petitioned the Tasman District Council to lobby the Government on the community's behalf.

His petition rapidly attracted more than 2200 signatures.

The council has yet to voice its support. However, Nelson and Gisborne city councils and the Otorohanga District Council have passed resolutions endorsing the campaign, and others have expressed interest.

The Tasman council, which has a zero-waste policy, looks increasingly like a reluctant starter although the initiative arose in its backyard.

As a further irritant, Eddy advocates retaining community boards although the council's representation review appears increasingly to favour community associations.

CommunityAction encourages smokers not to throw away cigarette butts but to put them in film canisters, which they can later empty into a rubbish bin.

Tasman Mayor John Hurley recently branded the campaign, called Bin Yr Butts, as ``pathetic'', which perplexes Eddy .

As well as keeping toxic butts out of waterways, he says Bin Yr Butts has kept more than 4000 plastic film canisters in use and out of landfills.

As to the future, CommunityAction and its four campaigns are enough to keep him busy - along with studying for his MA. ``I'll be focusing on community participation and protecting the environment,'' he says.

Does it bother him that activism is a very insecure way of providing for his future?

``Yeah, course it does,'' he says. ``But there have been better people than me who've sacrificed more to get less personal reward.

``I have an important role in getting people who feel disinherited from the system to know about issues and get involved. And that's cool, man.''