Mr Denby does not know that it then circulates in a labyrinth of underground sewage, is discharged into the rivers and lakes, some of which later find their way back to our potable water system.

In the rare cases where it gets fully recycled, the process would require an amount of energy that clearly suggests the cure can be worse than the disease.

When I attended a water conference in Bali, Indonesia, last year one expert talked glibly of his charitable effort in helping some backward Asians get access to running water and modern toilets.

One Western listener observed that these people have been living like this in contentment for thousands of years, and wondered why they cannot be left alone.

A heightened sense of sanitation and hygiene is based on your ability to inject rubbish into the ecosystem that is considered hostile, alien, or at least something apart, something that is to be conquered, outwitted, or privatized.

By contrast, in Chinese philosophy ideal human existence is founded on human beings' oneness with the awe-inspiring Heaven (nature).

Encroaching landfill

Consumption power – or garbage-generating power – is now a measure of prosperity.

Statistics from last year show that 125 million tons of waste were created in 655 Chinese cities in 2007, representing an annual increase of 8 to 10 percent, apocalyptically comparable to the GDP growth.

As 40 percent of the garbage is simply buried in the suburban or rural areas without any recycling, ever-encroaching landfills are closing in on two thirds of these 655 cities, which are themselves expanding fast.

"In Beijing, as existing landfills are all operating beyond capacity, in four or five years there will be no place to bury the garbage," said Chen Yong, director of Beijing Municipal Administration Commission, in a recent interview with South Weekend.

These swelling landfills are drawing protests from concerned locals.

The picture is grim for Shanghainese too.

In 2007, each Shanghai resident created an average of 1.04 kg of garbage per day, comparable to the 1.1 kg for Japanese that year.

Shanghai's facilities can safely bury, incinerate, or recycle only about 8,500 of its total 20,000 tons of garbage created on an average day – the rest is sent to the over 200 makeshift garbage dumps scattered in the suburb.

Our growth is fueled by consumption, and we are more concerned about any letup in this growth than the expanding landfills.

According to one definition, sustainable development refers to development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

As a matter of fact, we are gratifying our imagined needs today by compromising our real needs tomorrow.

(Shanghai Daily April 30, 2009)