Prabhupāda: What is the meaning?
Devotee (2): The meaning is that people have exploited the atmosphere and the earth so badly in the last two hundred years especially, that, practically speaking, man is on the verge of self-destruction.
Hari-śauri: They're getting scared because they put so much pollution in the atmosphere, into the water, into the earth, that now they're.... Everything's.... It's reacting against them now.
Devotee (2): In other words, they're seeing that they've become a problem.
Hari-śauri: I was telling you about that blob of garbage that was left out in the..., headed towards the harbor in New York. For the last fifty years they've dumped all the garbage in the sea, and now it's collected together, and it's coming back into the shore. They think that in about fifteen years time, if it travels at its present rate, it will be blocking the entire New York Harbor. So ecology means they have to try to find out ways and means of avoiding things like that.
Devotee (2): Useless waste products. They've discovered new ways in science how to use things which can be used and used again and again. For example, newspapers, instead of throwing them away, they can recycle them and make new newspapers.
Devotee (3): They also say they were going to recycle their own urine and stool and use it over and over.
Prabhupāda: How?
Devotee (3): Like in the spaceship. When they go to the moon they recycle their own urine and drink it over again. (laughing)
Devotee (2): Actually, Śrīla Prabhupāda, the most popular philosophy is (inaudible).
Prabhupāda: Madman. (laughing)
Devotee (3): Man has created so many problems in the environment, so they don't think that the problem is man's way of doing things, or its heart. They simply consider if we can make some adjustments in the environment, then everything will go on very nicely.
Prabhupāda: They will try to make adjustments with material nature, everything will be failure. ...hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā. They'll never be able to adjust. Punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām (SB 7.5.30), chewing the chewed. That's all. (break) ...adjustment to lie down in the skyscraper, and now they are coming. Why they have come to the ground? Punaḥ punaś carvita. Sometimes on the ground, sometimes the sky. (break) They reject the stool and urine and then accept it. They do like that. (laughing) (break) It is rejected. It cannot be utilized. In India still the system is they use metal; when it is broken you can sell it. They take half price and supply new.... They use metal pots, and the (inaudible) is that when it is broken and old we can exchange with new plates. And this kind of bowls you have to throw away. You cannot utilize.
Devotee (3): So they break very easily?
Prabhupāda: Hm?
Devotee (3): These plates, the silverware and things that people use?
Prabhupāda: No, whatever (unclear). Silver is not half price. Silver, little less than new one. They purchase one rupee less. It was 200 rupees new, and the purchaser will take 190 (unclear) ...India they use (unclear). Bell metal, copper...
Hari-śauri: Aluminium is becoming very popular now, aren't they?
Prabhupāda: They don't use aluminium much. If they have got excess money, they invest in metal-gold, silver, copper, bell metal.... Immediate loan—you can mortgage the metal pots, the metal ornaments, you get money immediately. (break) ...in a year, that is a metal purchasing ceremony. Every family will purchase, according to his means, some metal pots once in a year. Dhantraivesi(?) (indistinct) means desire some funds. So if there's some extra money—not big, big men; middle class storeman—they invest in metal purchase. If there is a good business day, (unclear) all the utensils (unclear). You know Diwali, Diwali?
Devotee (2): Yes.
Prabhupāda: Just one day before Diwali.
Devotee (2): Yes.
Prabhupāda: Huge quantity of metals. Everyone will count (indistinct) (end)