Gold has exercised power for ages. People have been looking for gold since the beginning of mankind Whole (帝国) have been built on gold. The Spanish conquered all of Central and South America in order to bring gold back to their home country. Inca and Maya civilizations worshipped gold and thought it came from the sun. Explorers traveled for thousands of miles in search of the precious metal.

Gold is, once again, in great need, people want to have gold as a kind of safety in changing times. They invest in (投资于) gold instead of saving their money in banks. Many people argue that since 9/11 the world has become a more dangerous place. When in 2008 the financial markets collapsed (崩溃), the major money of the world became weaker. Investors were no longer sure how safe their money was. They bought more and more gold which made the price of the yellow metal rise.

One of the reasons why gold is so valuable is that it practically cannot be destroyed. It always stays the same and never changes. It can be recycled and afterwards be used for many things. In Iraq poor people collect gold dust and bring it back to jewellery shops to be recycled. Recycling gold is also a big business in Japan, where gold is collected from old mobile phones and other industrial waste.

The demand for the metal and increased production leads to a number of environmental problems. A single ounce of gold produces over 30 tons of waste, more than any other metal on earth. Poisonous substances can leak into rivers and pollute the water. In Peru and Brazil wide areas of the Amazon rainforest are cut down by the illegal mining of gold.

Why Is Littering a Surprisingly Big Issue?

Compared with the blindingly obvious environmental issues we hear about every day, littering often takes a backseat -- but it’s more pressing than we may think.

If you were to throw, say, a banana peel (香蕉皮) out of your car while driving along the motorway, that would be a completely harmless action, due to the fact that it’s part of a fruit -- right? Actually, no. A banana peel can take up to two years to decompose (分解), and with a third of motorists admitting to littering while driving, that’s a whole lot of abandoned banana peels, or much worse. An orange peel and a cigarette butt has a similar biodegrading (生物降解) term to that of a banana, but tin and aluminium cans last up to 100 years, and plastic bottles last forever, as do glass bottles, Styrofoam cups and plastic bags.

Despite the fact that longer-lasting materials will serve to damage the environment and its animals for longer, we can’t only measure the severity of a certain type of rubbish by its lifetime. For example, despite having a fairly short biodegrading period, more than 120 tons of cigarette-related litter is abandoned in the UK every day. Similarly, our regular littering here and there has caused the UK’s rat population to increase by 60 million. This suddenly isn’t so mysterious when you consider that since the 1960s our annual littering has increased by an astonishing 500 per cent.

It’s not a cheap habit either: UK taxpayers shelve out £500 million in order to keep our streets clean, and when you include our green spaces, that goes up to £1 billion. So, it’s not surprising that if caught fly-tipping you could face a £20,000 fine or even jail time and, if you littered something dangerous, the court could give you five years to serve.

To take back our beautiful countryside and cities we need to do more than simply not leaving rubbish where it ought not to be. We need a pride makeover, and we need to truly care more about the world around us.