It's hot in Sydney. Maybe not as hot as Melbourne but still hot. Hot enough to lose sleep at night if you don't have the luxury of air-con, or the poor man's equivalent, a fan. So I bought one for the princely sum of $12.59.Once I finished interpreting the chinglish assembly instructions, and recovering from a flying nut that flew out when I first turned the thing on, I began to feel guilty. Guilty with the knowledge that, one day, that fan will end up in landfill, along with the hundreds of other fans that were running out the door today at Target.
The environment has been on my mind since watching a recent episode of the brilliant Mad Men. Set in the 1950s, the show often depicts things you just don't see any more, like smoking housewives, black maids, and the like. In this episode, the Draper family are having a picnic. When they decide to leave, they simply shake their rubbish-laden picnic rug onto the lawn, jump into their Oldsmobile, and drive off.
For some reason, this really shocked me, that people from my parents generation used to do this to our planet. My first reaction was that it was unsophisticated, even primitive, but I quickly realised that in almost 60 years, we haven't changed that much. We were trashing our planet in the 50s with debris from our picnics, and we rubbish it today with twelve dollar fans from China.
And what's even worse is that I try to relieve my guilt by blogging about it, like somehow it negates the fact that I am also part of this unstoppable beast.
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