into the outdoor furniture and decking in his garden. Similarly, the Global Environment Campaign is an easier sell because it involves issues on which our domestic taxes are being spent every day. While recently pitching a story concerning e-waste, the journalist candidly asked me: 'So, you've got a mountain of discarded technology from this country that's supposed to properly disposed of but is instead winding up in huge piles in Africa, where children are being poisoned because they're stripping out toxic raw materials in primitive circumstances? Why should people in this country be concerned about that?' Because we in the developed world are morally obliged to deal with our own waste and not offload it on poor, developing countries? Because we're paying our taxes in this country to have it properly and safely disposed of? Because the chain of personal responsibility can start with the very television set or computer monitor through which the individual is learning about the issue? It doesn't come much closer to home than that. Other issues and campaigns can be a harder sell, and are sometimes dependant on the personal concerns of the journalist to whom one is pitching. Images from EIA investigation, March 2010. Last year, one reporter succinctly summed up for me her difficulties in convincing her editors to run a story about the annual slaughter of Dall's porpoises in Japan , which EIA was again attempting to highlight: 'So, Japanese people are killing unprotected porpoises and then selling the toxic, mercury-polluted meat