With all this talk of buying stuff and develloping the world, we better not forget waste (your fault Wayne, you mentioned the contents of your PC).
I seem to recall Stuart talking about the locals on one of his trips. They make what they need from the environment, and when it breaks it gets tossed away to returning to the cycle of things.
This has been the same through our history - you only have to look at Tony Robinson getting excited about an old rubbish tip full of bone and bits of broken pot.
The trouble is that now, things dont go back to nature as quickly. Waste sites are running out, and the general population dont always do what they can to reduce the amount going to landfill. Legislation means that it is now expensive to dispose of waste properly, and fly tipping is on the increase.
If any of you out there run a business, or are involved in getting your skips at work emptied, have a look at your watse transfer notes. One relatively recent bit of legislation means that everything should have a European Waste Code entered against it - so it can be classified in a uniform way. I look at hundreds of these notes every year, and I am always surprised at how even some of the major waste companies dont seem to be using these properly - with each company either not recording the code or having a different one for the same waste collected on a different day.
Seperating waste for recycling is not always an ideal solution either in our increasingly global economy. Recent reports of PC and electronic equipment recycling operations in places like China shows that companies in the more develloped areas are happy to sell their problem on people who then extract what they want and have a burn up - no PPE and heavy meatals leeching all over the place.
All you can do is what you can - in your own personal circumstances. Everything that you can do will help.
When you visit the tip, have a look to see how easily people put stuff in the wrong skip - for the sake of a few yards extra walk to the next one.
When you go to the recycling bank at the local supermarket, take a look and see how many of the people - who visited with good intentions - then contribute to the occurrence of the "Plastic Bag Tree" by not taking the carrier bag away with them.
When you wash your car, dont do it near a surface water drain. If you use detergent, it will just mess up the oil interceptors that are installed at some point in the system - sending oily water into the watercourse. If you wash your car in the street in Australia, you can get fined.
Try not to buy stuff that is over-packaged. I dispair at the ecological disaster that is Easter Eggs.
Try and buy something that will last a long time, or can at least be repaired easily. Then think hard and try and get it repaired - rather than throwing it away and buying a new one. Dont treat your mobile as a fashion accessory, you dont need a new one while the old one still works.
When you get a visit from your local political activists, make sure you give them a hard time about all the paper they send out at election time, and ask them how much of it was made from recycled paper (i didnt see any recycled materials logo's on any of the propoganda that I got in the last couple of months). Give them a hard time - it makes their day
Get out and appreciate what nature has provided, and leave the area looking like nobody else has been there.
And finally, when my time is up - I wanna be burried under a tree
