I was recommended the Alistair Sawdays travel website by a friend when looking for places to stay in Italy for our honeymoon. Although I haven't chosen any of them, I admire it as a collection of truly unique and beautiful places to rest your head.

I received an e-newsletter from Sawdays publishing today with the following competition winning questions that were entered to interest, perplex or challenge the judges. I liked them, especially the hand drying dilemma - so true!

"If eating organically and ethically produced food is better, and everyone, on a mass scale, decides to convert; does this not mean that it then turns into mass-production on a huge scale thus contradicting the initial effort and concept itself?" Annabelle, London

"Which is best when drying your hands in public toilets: paper towel; normal towel (the ones that go round in a big circles and need cleaning once complete); or a hand dryer? At my work they have all three and I'm damned if I can make a decision on which to use!" Judd

"I'd like to know the CO2 emissions caused by making the bombs and munitions for the Iraq war, shipping them to Iraq, bombing the Iraqis, rebuilding the bombed premises, caring for the injured etc. Then ask the same questions about the Afghanistan 'adventure'. I will be more enthusiastic about recycling my Muesli cardboard when these questions are addressed." Stephen

"If the government were to pay for every house in Britain to become super-efficient savers and producers of electricity I suspect that the total amount of electricity saved and produced would exceed the output of at least one new power station and probably at a fraction of the cost and pollution of building and running one. If one were to then factor in the economic benefit and positive adjustment to economies of scale in mass producing solar panels, etc., surely this would become a viable proposition?" Martin

"Which uses more petrol: driving with the windows open or with the air conditioning on?" Kylie

"Is it better to rinse out a plastic container for recycling and put products such as sun cream, make up, milk etc in the water system and send it clean or leave the product in the container and let the recycling plant wash it because they probably wash it anyway?" Helen

Labels: seeing_doing