Sport shoes, Smart shoes, running shoes, beach shoes, shoes for use indoors, shoes for hiking…

Given the chance, Modern manufacturers would have you to believe that you need different types of footwear for each and every activity you do. Consequently most people own more than one pair and a few significantly more.

But how much of this is caused by actual requirement, and how much is caused by advertising, fashion and manufactured demand. Put simply, how many pairs of shoes do you actually need.

It may come as a surprise to some, but you only actually need ONE pair. More specifically a pair of good quality, traditional black leather shoes with a good, non-flat sole.

They are perfectly good for waling, running, hiking, all outdoor activities and all situations requiring “smart” footwear. They dry out quickly when they get wet, are easy to clean and can always be returned to a shine with some polish.

Humans have been around for approximately 200,000 years, shoes in there current form are a relatively new thing by comparison. A small minority of people in developed countries are complexity or partly abandoning the use of shoes. The barefoot running movement is one such example of this.

How many pairs of shoes do you own, have you considered reducing down to one pair?

There is no disputing it, electronic waste is a massive problem. Every year hundreds of millions of electronic devices are replaced. But as electronics contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals like lead, they are extremely difficult and costly to dispose of.

Disposing of E-waste using Land fills or incineration simply results in the release of the toxics, which get into ground water and the atmosphere. Recycling is not the solution either, the toxic chemicals mean that recycling electronic waste is an extremely expensive and hazardous operation.

A lot of e-waste “recycling” companies are actually just resellers. They take the waste and sell it to 3rd world countries with lower wages and standards for worker protection. Where people get payed pitiful amounts to deal with the waste, getting poisoned in the proses.

The ironic thing here is that most of this “waste” is actually still perfectly usable. The only reason why it is even considered waste is marketers manipulating people into thinking they need the latest X, when in actuality there old one works perfectly fine.

The desktop computing industry is a prime example of this: People buy a computer, use it for a year or two. By this time computer hardware has evolved substantially and there original computer is starting to feel slow, so they upgrade.

For the vast majority of the population, computers are only used for browsing the internet and basic word processing, neither of these require much processing power at all. Modern computers are actually over powered to the point where they run idle 99% of the time. So where is the slowness coming from?

Its a fundamental software architecture problem with the way that Microsoft Windows is designed. The OS uses a large centralised database, otherwise known as the registry to store program settings. Program uninstallers never clean the registry properly, meaning that it gradually fills up with useless junk, causing the system to slow down.

Solving this problem is trivial: periodically re-install the OS. Unfortunately this solution is not known to most people, who assume the system is broken, thus they replace it.

So whats the solution to E-waste? Don’t upgrade systems for the sake of it.

In the current times, almost every advert and marketing campaign includes the word “new”. Marketers seam to think that if they just stick the word `new’ somewhere, all of there problems will be solved, this is not the case.

In reality, very few of these products actually are new in any way shape or form. They are just re-brandings or clones of existing products. As practically every product is clamming to be new, the word has completely lost its impact. If everything claims to be new, nothing is.

For marketing to be effective, it needs to be unique and the product needs to be worthwhile. Just copying another product and slapping the word `new’ on it will not work any more.

Many people in the modern age work and ultimately think only for themselves or there immediate family, devoting there whole lives to the accumulation of money and stuff. While working mediocre jobs just to support there desires, most of which are artificially created by advertisers.

But what happens when such a person dies? There money is acquired by there family and there stuff is sold off or heads to the nearest land fill, doing nothing whatsoever to improve humanity as a whole.

Don’t be like this, devote yourself to art, writing, science, devote yourself to creating work which benefits humanity and the future generations, not just yourself. Start to free yourself today from the artificial desires created by advertisers. Work on something worthwhile, ultimately you will feel much happier with yourself.