Right - and that is why the process needs to begin in your head, despite the fact that current arrangements make this difficult (that kool-aid again). Such docos encourage this process.

Yeah, it's that 'progress' thing that has to be very carefully defined - simply seeing it as more things produced more efficiently (in terms of the input of living labor power) is not sufficient, in itself, for categorizing all 'progress' as 'good'.

@Campo: Didn't watch the link, but your post is spot on, you said it better than I did. Strongly believe that the kool-aid producers have to be dealt with, and this can start in your own head, although one shouldn't imagine that it can finish there.

Gompo has a point. though I think it's incorrect to blame it all on consumers - however, consumerist thinking (having more things = success = happiness etc.), which the economic system encourages everywhere, has indeed induced a sloppiness about waste that is not unfamiliar to those of us from affluent societies where, despite more recent attention and change in consumer behavior (throwing things in waste baskets rather than on the street, etc.), there still seems to be a rather careless attitude towards the production and use of a lot of crap and the discarding of that which we've gotten bored with, or which we still imagine can be continually produced and discarded at our pleasure. The necessity to rein in wasteful behavior in China should not blind us to the scope of the global problem and the insufficient seriousness with which most people regard it. Yeah, recycling is good - as far as it goes.

@Blobbles: that makes sense to me.