When I got home I had two very different bags. The one from the national D. I. Y chain was exactly as you'd expect, a cardboard backing with a plastic blister front, the checkout cashier insisted on putting the whole thing in yet another plastic bag. Even though I pointed out I didn't really want the extra bag, the cashier seemed to be affronted as if I was questioning their ability to do the job. I actually prefer to support the small DIY shop that seems to stock almost everything I need. This must be one of the last of a dying breed. The bits and pieces I needed were all priced individually and when my cable clips, fuses and cable were all counted out for me they were popped into a small brown paper bag; just like the old days. And there's the difference, not only do I feel that I am not being forced to buy the number of parts dictated by someone else but I also don't have yet more plastic to dispose of. I really do feel that the design of modern packaging deliberately ignores the needs of the customer. As I struggled with a scalpel, kitchen knife and scissors to break in to the see-through prison that my parts were incarcerated in, I wondered once more whether this really was an improvement.

Although most of us wouldn't notice it there is real pressure on now to stop taking our rubbish away and land filling it. This is simply because we are rapidly running out of space to dump our weekly collection of household refuse and as a result for many years council's (and therefore you) have had to pay a landfill levy. So now we are being squeezed from top and bottom; from landfill to global warming in the atmosphere. Most of us are pretty resistant to doing anything about the environment unless we are convinced we really need to or are forced to. If you're one of those people who take advantage of the councils collection scheme and recycle as much as possible you'll notice that your bin is now mainly full of packaging.

On our own its going to be pretty difficult to make manufacturers change the way they package their goods, (after all they are not even designed to get inside), but we can make a start by refusing plastic bags in shops and supermarkets. The revolutionary answer to what to do without plastic bags is to bring several cotton shopping bags, yes what goes round comes round. Supermarkets are slowly waking up to the change which is on the way and some of them are already selling these new "reusable shopping bags" while others are using biodegradable plastic bags that will break down in the soil. Unfortunately the soil route will not always be there, so it's back to grandma's old bags.

Very soon we will be faced with a number of choices about what to do with our rubbish. One of the choices is incineration and like nuclear power this gets some people very hot under the collar. But we shouldn't put off examining whether incineration is the way forward for getting rid of our waste, at the very least we should be asking what the advantages and disadvantages would be if one was built at the end of our gardens. It really requires a two pronged attack from all of us and in addition to thinking about how to dispose of waste we also need to think about how to reduce it.

But responsibility won't stop there, the next time you experience some dramatic change due to our weather system you will have to ask yourself, is this just one of those things or is my lifestyle having a serious impact on the world. Within the next few years we are going to have to face up to the impact that our waste, our cars and our source of electricity has on our own lives and those of our families.