Transparent garbage bags. The Next Big Thing. That will certainly teach us to separate our bio-degradable goods from our plastics and our non-shiny card. Just imagine. All of your rubbish laid out in a chichi modern transparent waste-disposal bag for the whole street to see.

Those failing to comply with the garbage separation rules will be castigated, punished, reprimanded. Made an example of.

Sounds a little strange, huh? But life-style changes are systemic. Yet when we think of how about ten years ago, practically everyone was lumping their plastics, their aluminium cans, their bottles, their card with all the other junk into the trash can without a second thought for the environment, we have to accept that change happens.

Alternative life-style forms are being rapidly assimilated into the “normal” way of living. Life-style habits that ten years ago seemed to be the occupation of a few well-meaning (yet ultimately hopeless crazies) are rapidly being incorporated into the so called normal life-style.

Home exchange can easily been seen as one of these “green” features. Something that ten years back only a few Euro-phile cranks like my parents were doing. Yet now it is receiving more and more press coverage, people are signing up to the free home exchange sites every day, and the concept is rapidly becoming better known.

We live in an exciting age. Which is all the better for sweetly cheap and fun-filled holidays!