I did not set this shot up. But it did stop me in my tracks on the street.

In Canada, reduce, re-use, recycle is wired into us at an early age. This has resulted in an astonishing recycling rate for my generation - at least for bottles and cans. But this barely scratches the surface of our environmental impact, often while assuaging the guilt of the recycler.

What I saw in Senegal was much more fundamental. Everything that had any residual value was reused. Over consumption was non-existent. Why? Necessity.

So what's the difference? I recycle cans because I don't want to feel guilty. My Senegalese friends recycled car doors because they still had value.

Value. I think what Eeyore does, sitting in the back of a dump truck, is force us to stop and think of the value we are chucking into the back of a garbage truck. He confronts us with the lost value, by helping us recognise what we have lost. Maybe that's why he stopped a handful of other passersby as I took the picture.

Cambridge, 2008.

In the Environmentalism photo essay.