Where's There's Muck...

By now the group had begun to see the rubbish around them as a potentially useful resource. However, the latest stage in Rob's masterplan to make them love rubbish was to prove to them that not only could it be useful but also valuable.

He gathered the group together to announce that in four days' time they would be visited by Ray Crocker, a scrap merchant who would buy off them anything of value they had managed to scavenge from the dump. Rob warned: 'You can scavenge whatever you want but whatever you collect you must separate. Ray will give you the going rate for that waste.'

Where there's muck there's money

Whatever money the group earned from their rubbish could be spent on items to help improve their lives on the dump. Most of the group were excited about the potential for earning hard cash from trash. 'Excellent!' exclaimed Jarvis. 'We never thought we would get excited about rubbish!' was Sasha's view. Rob explained that each day a dumper truck would make a fresh delivery of rubbish and it would be up to them to sort through it and decide which materials to sell.

But Jason was concerned: 'What if he takes away the waste we might want to use?' Now there would be two potential uses for stuff they found - they could either keep it to build with and improve their lives on the dump, or they could sell it for money. Could this lead to tensions developing between people who wanted to build (like Jason) and others who just wanted to buy booze and chocolate?

It wasn't long before a 40-tonne dumper truck arrived to make the first delivery, to the group's excitement. Selena and Jason directed the truck in and instructed the driver where to tip. Once the new rubbish had been poured out into a pile on the ground, Sasha, Aaron and Sylvia could not contain their excitement. They ran towards it and jumped in to see what hidden treasures might be in there.

However, Lawrence was worried that trouble could be on the horizon, because what didn't previously have a financial value now did. Christine also shared his concerns: 'When money comes into it, it starts getting weird. And it's happening.' she warned sagely.