Random Thoughts

What a waste!

S. Pathiravitana

It has been said of people who have no control over their eating habits that they are digging their grave with their teeth. We consumers may soon be told, if the warning hasn’t already gone, that with our current consumption styles and habits we shall soon be digging the graveyard for the entire world.

Consider what is happening to Mt Everest. The other day a documentary that was shown on a TV channel focused on the unbelievable amount of trash left on the lofty heights of the Himalayas by mountaineers trying to imitate the achievements of Sir Edmund Hillary and the brave guide who showed him the way to the top, Sherpa Tensing.

Interviewed on this same program, Sir Edmund said that in his day the term ‘environment pollution’ was not heard of. Even if some intrepid mountaineers left behind a few odds and ends unthinkingly, there was nothing like the 20,000 empty canisters and other bric-a-brac now lying on the mountain paths to Everest.

The ‘progress’ we are supposed to be making in our march towards civilisation will soon bring us closer to the ?barbarism? we are supposed to be running away from. Millions or rather trillions of penlight torch batteries, which are now a necessary adjunct of our civilisation, perish as soon as they are born. And what do we do with these little carcasses? Just throw them away? Yes, that’s what we are doing now.

In the old days it didn’t matter perhaps. Mother Earth had a good digestion. Now with what we are pouring over her each day, she is showing serious signs of indigestion. There is a term invented by our scientists for this indigestibility that Mother Earth is suffering from.

Nearly all the waste products of our civilisation, so scientists say, are not ?bio-degradable,? meaning that it cannot be reduced to a lower perishable organic form. Hence, this serious problem of our time.

Somehow, in the so-called ?barbarous? times in our history, man knew how to get along with the environment. The Australian aborigines, for instance, got along so harmoniously that both the land and the species survived for nearly 50,000 years until the white civilisation arrived on the scene with its unique philosophy and mode of conduct. The first to go were the aborigines.

They were reduced or rather ethnically cleansed to a fifth of the population, something like 50,000 today.

There are of course regrets all round, but not enough to bring back ?the glory that hath passed away from this earth.? We haven?t still curbed this urge to load our poor earth with mountains of junk and trash.

Millions of computers, for instance, are being thrown into ash cans in the reportedly most affluent country in the world, the United States of America Not because their manufacture is bad, but because it is a slight to the affluence of that country and to its business community as well its technology to re-condition them for use again.

That would be a thought that would come instinctively to a poor ?underdeveloped? society like ours. And, strange to say, that is a thought that is occurring to some Americans right now. A few of them have got together to meet this challenge.

This is what I heard them say on the Internet. “Millions of computers are thrown away every year across the US. Good machines are hauled to the dump daily while thousands of people with disabilities, schools and non-profit organisations are either struggling along using obsolete equipment or doing without computers entirely.”

Speaking for myself I think we should do without computers altogether. Since I cannot persuade this madly rushing world to see my point of view I might as well tell such people to get to a web site and click Recycling and then click Share the Technology - computer recycling project or try www.sharetechnology.org A poor underdeveloped country such as ours struggling to keep its educational expenses down may find this offer of a virtually free supply of used, re-conditioned computers very tempting.

But this of course does not solve the problem of getting rid of waste. It is only encouraging people to reach for more and more after what they think are the good things in life. But what are the good things in life?

If you watch the people in the industrialised world at both work and play, you can see how much they wish to get away from the work they do when they say, “Thank God, it’s Friday” And where do you think they want to get away to? To a sun-drenched tropical isle and see the smiling faces of people who seem to them are doing virtually nothing.