We are a messy race

Ko Kud, Thailand, 28 May 2007
Now, I'm not having a dig at Thailand per se, the inordinate amount of rubbish the human race produces is a global phenomenon and truly phenomenal. That said, probably the Gulf of Thailand is a little more chock-a-block with flotsam & jetsam than most stretches of water. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night the other...err...night (product of going to bed at 8:30pm I think) and not being able to drop back under the spell, I started thinking about the issue. I guess it was on my mind.

Now I'm not going to get all overtly moralistic and Green Party Manifesto thumping (recycled, unbleached paper, natch) although there's no reason not to, but I did have a little bit of a personal epiphany. (Any 15 year old fourth year economics student - feel free to shoot my arguments down in flames. Make a change from me enduring said 15 year olds deafeningly shooting each other in CyberShacks with their online gaming.) It occurred to me that on the grander scale the world economy is based on production and consumption. At the bottom of the production chain are the raw materials: coal, wood, oil, gas, beef, wheat, iron ore...the list is endless. And we as consumers consume these raw materials (no, really!), often after they've been refined and manufactured into other stuff. And it's the byproduct of all this, the stuff that's left over or not useful that we end up just chucking out, clogging up landfills, littering fields, parks and road sides...and oceans. And that's not even going into the non-renewable issue that entangles a lot of the base materials.

OK, so that's not going to win any prizes for fresh or groundbreaking news I know. But isn't the whole world's economy based on us producing more, consuming more, paying for newer, bigger (or smaller in some cases), faster, shinier, things with more knobs and dials, more channels, tones, computerisation...all in a stunning NEW colour that's the must have hottest trend! And therefore isn't the world economy completely at loggerheads with the growing motto of 'Reduce, reuse, recycle' that Jack Johnson has so adroitly popularised (and after three months of having it played on loop coming up through Malaysia and Thailand I would happily recycle all his CDs into coasters or Frisbees).

So if we were really to embrace this ethos of RRR, then surely commerce would have to start marketing (and making) their products differently and certainly not building in redundancy that I'm sure takes place these days. I mean, what mobile phone doesn't seem to start playing up after a year and a half? Coincidence or a conspiracy between phone manufacturers and cellular network providers to tie you into another 18 months contract as you need a new phone and you're not going to pay off the shelf prices (although you pay more in the end I'll warrant)? (Guess whose phone has just started playing up!)

Volvo - buy one for a lifetime, hydrogen cell compatible and we'll even throw in a fresh water waste collection system so kiss goodbye to water rates!

Is that really going to happen? Where's the money in making a product that doesn't need replacing...ever, in reducing consumption to the lowest level possible? So where's the money in NOT polluting and producing more waste? While society still operates on an attitude of consumption, then there is no impetus to change the way things are. Like most things in life, change comes at the level of personal responsibility...or we could all carry on regardless until you can walk from shore to shore across the rubbish floating in the sea or have to wear gas masks to walk in an urban street.

OK, rant over but just for those that like pretty pictures, here's a delightful selection of pretty items I encountered simply strolling along the beach in Ko Kud. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice beach. It just could have been nicer without all the junk. And that statement works for the world in general.

(Jeepers, I think I've become Evan!)