'God doesn't do waste,' says Archbishop on YouTube

The Archbishop of Canterbury has followed the Queen's lead in posting his annual message on YouTube, where his green theme for the New Year is "God doesn't do waste".

Rowan Williams criticises society's willingness to create waste in its ceaseless search for the latest and best.

"Despite constant talk about recycling and thinking 'green', we're still a society that produces fantastic quantities of waste," he says.

"Look at the number of plastic bags flapping around by the roadside, in town and country alike and you see what I mean.

"In a society where we think of so many things as disposable; where we expect to be constantly discarding last year's gadget and replacing it with this year's model, do we end up tempted to think of people and relationships as disposable?

"Are we so fixated on keeping up with change that we lose any sense of our need for stability?" In the message, filmed partly in Canterbury Cathedral and at a local recycling centre, Williams says God is involved in building to last.

"He doesn't give up on the material of human lives. He doesn't throw it all away and start again. And he asks us to approach one another and our physical world with the same commitment," he says.

"God doesn't do waste. He doesn't regard anyone as a `waste of space', as not worth his time.

"A culture of vast material waste and emotional short-termism is a culture that is a lot more fragile than it knows," Williams says.

"How much investment are we going to put in towards a safer and more balanced future?"

The message, first broadcast on BBC2 on Monday evening, will be repeated on BBC1 at mid-day on Tuesday.