Caring Nicholas recycles life’s bad with the good

Young Nicholas Culverson recently learnt one of life’s most important lessons; that there is more good than bad in the world.

 Collecting recycling bottles for charity over nearly half his eight years, he recently witnessed the worst, and the best, in humanity.

 Thieves stole hundreds of recyclable containers for his Return and Earn project to help others, but Colour City locals have come to the rescue!

 “He started collecting more than three years ago; the year before he went to school,” mum Cindy explained how his cause started.

 The project had come-out of the family’s support for the Cancer Council’s Relay for Life. Showing that caring runs in the family, Cindy explained that their long-term commitment came-about due to a close friend being touched by the disease.

 “One of my friends had cancer, and we were chatting over my house, and we said, ‘we’d do it’.

 The annual event’s unique mix of the social and the solemn though touched the family’s sense of community. “It was just sort of a one-off thing, but we’ve been doing it ever since.”

 “It’s great to spend time with people; I love the vibe. It’s so much fun and it’s a good cause,” Cindy said.

 It was out of this long-term support to the (pre COVID) annual fund-raiser, that Nicholas’ project began.

 “How it started, we’d been doing Relay for 10 years; we were collecting the bottles for ourselves, and then Nick said, ‘Let’s Collect for Relay for Life’.” 

 Cindy said that such a selfless suggestion from a pre-schooler, was, however, right in character. “He has always been a very caring, loving, kind child,” Cindy said. “So, I was not surprised that he came-up with that one.”

 Recipient of the family’s generosity until recently, a cause closer to home caught Nick’s caring eye.

 “Up until now, the money from the cans and bottles went to Relay for Life but a little boy who Nick went to school with, his mother has got bowel cancer,” Cindy said, adding that Nick’s collection usually raises about $10 per week for the family.

 With the Return and Earn paying 10 cents a bottle or container, this, however, doesn’t mean that the Culversons are getting through 100 bottles and cans of soft drink a week, Cindy hastens to add.

 “There’s a couple of other people who donate, one that I pick-up from, and one that drops-off the containers here.”

 She recalls that, a story in the local media when Nicholas first established his project, saw the family receiving dozens of pick-up requests from locals trying to help.

 “We had a story in the paper on it, but we couldn’t keep-up. One day I went to the Return and Earn a total of 10-times,” Cindy said. With a smaller car and a busier life. She says she can no longer keep this regime up, “but if people want to do the Return and Earn, we will gladly accept their donations,” she added.

 The family has raised nearly $2000 for cancer causes over the past four years, but their inspiring story took a dark turn a few weeks ago when hundreds of bottles and cans were stolen.

 “We had them all stored where my garbage bins are at the front ready to go, but when we looked, they were all gone,” Cindy said.

 “Someone must have walked past, seen them, and grabbed them… there would have been $15–20 worth I suppose.”

 In one of the newer, clean-as-a-pin suburbs to Orange’s north, she emphasised that the theft was a one-off. “Six years we’ve been doing it, and we’ve never had an issue,” she said.

 “I told him (Nick) that someone had taken the cans and he just said, ‘Oh, yeah’,” she said.

 Less sanguine about the incident, Cindy took to social media to vent her frustration: “I had a whinge on Facebook saying sarcastically; ‘thanks a lot to the thieves who stole…’ and then someone dropped around $20, and other people came-around with some bags of cans and cash,” she said, adding that about $80 was to the good for Nick’s project in a few days.

 “It was really lovely,” Cindy said.

 Starting the project when he was a pre-schooler, Nick, she adds, is now tall enough to reach the entry slots at the Return and Earn depots, one of which is behind the north Woolworths car-park, the other in south Orange.

 “He’s tall-enough now to do the machine himself, he used to have to stand on the milk crate to do it,” Cindy said.

 Cindy added that the ‘incident of the disappearing recycling bags’ shows an important life-lesson for not just young Nick, but for all of us.

 “It just shows you, there’s a lot more nice people in the world than bad,” Cindy concluded.

 Anyone wishing to donate to Nick’s project, can go to the site: https://gofund.me/f1f127ca or call Cindy on 0418 671 761