Reinventing the Wheel

So a lecturer in Environment Matters set an exercise for her students to work out the cost per month of buying bottled water and presumably alternate ways of supplying the same. I was quite astonished to learn how much people spend on water, being blessed by being in an area with its own well- and merely sloshing through a Jug Filter and following my mother's habit of boiling the water before putting into the 'fridge to cool. Apparently this is not the case for lots of people who can spend up to $5000 a month, along with the other $5000 for cell phone charges, and with the lack of good Public Transport - everyone and his wife NEED their own Air-Conditioned vehicle.
I also notice the average person not carrying lunch and in some instances Breakfast to work/school generating excessive use of those dreadful white polystyrene boxes, and was a bit amused that it took an exercise in Class to drive home the generation of waste and unnecessary cost to work that out-- and these are students interested in the environment - where has common sense gone I wonder? The Government proudly touts this as Progress, the Champion of the Earth oblivious to the growing piles of garbage and waste around his country - I have noted instances of Energy-Saving in Government Buildings but wonder if we have to wait for the White People to teach us the obvious about caring for the Environment - sigh to paraphrase VS Naipaul - nothing good can come out of the Caribbean!