Materials

Hong Kong has never produced anything for export (except rock) but has developed primarily as a point of transhipment in the global process, for the distribution of other people’s stuff.

If we are to find a sustainable future, do we need to cut our dependency on stuff, and live on just what our territory can produce … which is just rock?   Certainly, we must work as a community to kick our heavy dependency on consuming.

The number of consumers in increasing, the rate of consumption is increasing, the cost (to the environment) of producing every more complex gadgets and stuff is increasing, and our ability to recycle and reuse is decreasing.

Within our lifetimes we will run out of the materials to make the stuff we feel is needed to make life worthwhile.  Future generations will look back on the 20th and early 21st centuries as a time of great profligacy, when we wasted the planet’s resources on vanity and personal comfort.