BRAZIL: ‘REPATRIATE THIS GARBAGE’

BRAZIL DUMPED
WITH BRITISH GARBAGE

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilians are kicking up a stink over 1,200 tonnes of British garbage, including toilet seats, dirty diapers and used syringes, that are rotting at two southern ports after arriving in container ships. The trash, which arrived in Brazil earlier this year, was destined for Brazilian companies that said they were expecting shipments of recyclable plastic, officials say. Instead, port officials found the containers that originated at the British port of Felixstowe packed with trash ranging from the chemical toilet seats to food remnants and computer pieces.

Brazil's federal prosecution office asked the foreign ministry on to request that Britain take back the shipments. "We will ask for the repatriation of this garbage," said the Brazilian environment agency IBAMA president Roberto Messias. "Clearly, Brazil is not a big rubbish dump of the world." IBAMA has imposed fines on the import companies involved in the shipments and Mr Messias said it was "difficult to believe" they were innocent of any wrongdoing. The British Embassy said in a statement it was investigating the case and would "not hesitate to act" if it was found that a company had violated the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste. Both countries are signatories of the treaty, which came into force in 1992.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Pollution of environment is a problem which people in a America are viewing with great concern. This problem is also due to Godlessness. People instead of producing food they are producing in huge quantities some artificial necessities of life, for which so much industry is working at top speed. Industrialization means to bring the people more and more away from God consciousness. The laborer, the worker in the factory, all of them are sudras, and the capitalist of the industry they are vaisyas, so the whole population is now composed of vaisyas and sudras, which means the quality of passion and ignorance is now prominent. A passionate person or ignorant person cannot understand the Powerful, only those who are in Goodness or mixed Goodness and passion they can understand the powerful.

So there is a necessity of changing the ignorant persons into persons with real knowledge. Therefore these people should be turned to become God conscious, that is our programme. Anyone from any group, either sudra, vaisya, or any group lower than the sudra, we are taking them and making them intelligent and giving them a chance to understand the supreme power. So all around the real problem is to understand the supreme power and all other problems are subsidiary.

Srila A.C. BV Swami Prabhupada
"Letter to: Sir Alistair Hardy - Bhaktivedanta Manor, 28 July, 1973"