WEEE man

He's an ugly brute, isn't he?

He's made up of the 3.3 tons of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) thrown away by the average person in the UK in their lifetime.

Makes you think, doesn't it? He stands as high as a house - you can maybe get a better idea of size by enlarging the noticeboard picture and observing the people in the background. It was too big to get everything into the one picture without being so far away the detail would have been lost. I would guess that the average person in the US, Canada, Europe and every westernised country goes through a similar amount of "stuff" in a lifetime - possibly more.

I'm as guilty as anyone else. My washer-dryer packed up this week mid wash, and I've bought a new one. Well, you do, don't you? How to exist without one?

The John Lewis partnership undertake to remove the old one for free when they deliver the new one, and I must ask them what they propose to do with it. I console myself with the thought that I've had my faithful old washer dryer for almost 25 years, so I'm not doing too badly.

The Eden Project has a good education section where hordes of school kids rush around pushing this, pulling that and generally finding out how things work. There was a party from a French school there and they seemed to be having a great time. They all gazed at the WEEE man in fascination. Such a pity I couldn't understand what they were saying.