The post you are reporting:
Dear Philip. It is human nature perhaps that when one ash-tray is full we just get another ash-tray...then another...and another. For preposterous it would surely be to think that we, the masters of all we survey, could ever run out of ash-trays.
And so we sit, puffing away contentedly. The health and environmental issues need never detain us, just as long as the supply of ash-trays is seen as never ending.
Alas and alack! Although we are the masters of all we survey it is inescapable that we share that honour with our fellow humans, with our neighbours. Our neighbours may read newspapers, they may eat lots of sweets and chocolates. No ash-trays for they, oh no. They need waste-paper baskets in much the same way we need ash-trays...when one is full they too pop off and obtain the next one and the next one...
The world rolls around regardless.
BUT
We must, to be fair, give thought to just where these ash-trays and litter-bins come from. We know and revel in the fact that tobacco, sugar, chocolate, paper and wicker (for the baskets) not only grow naturally, but are indeed cultivated...you can see them growing in the fields if we stand atop a step ladder to gaze over Mount Ash-Tray and scan beyond waste-basket ridge.