To eliminate waste, we need to rediscover thrift

Posted 2021-04-24 TED搬运工毓毓

Let's talk about thrift. Thrift is a concept where you reduce, reuse and recycle, but yet with an economic aspect I think has a real potential for change. My grandmother, she knew about thrift. This is her string jar. She never bought any string. Basically, she would collect string.It would come from the butcher's, it would come from presents. She would put itin the jar and then use it when it was needed. When it was finished, whether it was tying up the roses or a part of my bike, once finished with that, it'd goback into the jar. This is a perfect idea of thrift; you use what you need, you don't actually purchase anything, so you save money.

让我们说说节俭。节俭是一个关于减少使用，重复利用，回收再利用的一个概念，但在经济方面，我觉得它可以带来真正的改变。我的祖母，她知道怎么节俭。这是她放皮筋儿的罐子，她从来不买皮筋儿，只是收集它们。这些皮筋儿来自于肉铺，或者是礼品包装。她会把绳子存到罐子里，当需要用时，再取出来。用完后——不管是用它来扎玫瑰花束，还是我的自行车部件，用完后它就会重新回到罐子中。这是一个很棒的节约理念；你只用你需要的，不用去买太多东西，所以能省不少钱。

 

00:38

Kids also inherently know this idea. When you want to throw out a cardboard box, the average kid will say, "Don't! I want touse it for a robot head or for a canoe to paddle down a river." They understand the value of the second life of products. So, I think thrift is a perfect counter point to the current age which we live in. All of our current products are replaceable. When we get that bright, new, shiny toy, it's because, basically, we got rid of the old one. The idea of that is, of course,it's great in the moment, but the challenge is, as we keep doing this, we're going to cause a problem.

孩子们天生就知道如何节俭，当你想丢弃一个纸箱时，孩子一般会说，“别扔！我想用来做机器人的头，或者做成独木舟去漂流。”他们知道产品二次利用的价值。我认为节俭与我们当今所处的时代完美对应。目前我们所有的产品都是可替代的。当我们得到一件崭新的、闪亮的玩具，是因为我们把旧的丢掉了。没错，当时的感觉很美好，但如果我们一直这么做，就会产生一个问题。

 

01:14

That problem is that there is really no way. When you throw something away, it typically goes into a landfill. Now, a landfill is basically something which is not going to go away, and it's increasing. At the moment, we have about 1.3 billion tons of material every year going into landfills. By 2100, it's going to be about four billion tons. See, instead, I'd prefer if we started thrifting. What that means is, we consider materials when they go into products and also when they get used, and, at the end of their life: When can they be used again? It's the idea of completely changing the way we think about waste, so waste is no longer a dirty word -- we almost remove the word "waste" completely. All we're looking to is resources.Resource goes into a product and then can basically go into another product. Weused to be good at thrifting. My grandmother, again, used to use old seed packets to paper the bathroom walls.

问题就是，那些东西根本没有办法真正的消失。当我们丢掉一些东西时，它们通常会被送到垃圾填埋场。而垃圾填埋场是不会消失的，而且现在规模还在不断增加。现在，我们每年把13亿吨垃圾送到垃圾填埋场。 2100年，这个数字会达到40亿吨。而我希望我们开始学会节俭，这意味着，我们要思考：在产品的各个阶段，从生产制造，到消费使用，最后到寿终正寝，材料什么时候能被二次利用？我们要彻底改变对垃圾的看法，让垃圾不再是一个肮脏的词——我们几乎再也不需要用“垃圾”这个词。我们看到的只有资源。这些资源会被制作成产品，然后通过再利用变成另一件产品。我们过去很擅长节俭。再说回我的祖母，她曾经用旧的种子包装纸来当浴室的墙纸。

 

02:09

I think, though, there are companies out there who understand this value and are promoting it. And a lot of the technologies thathave been developed for the smart age can also be adapted to reduce, reuse and also thrift more proficiently. And as a materials scientist, what I've been tracking over the last couple of decades is how companies are getting smart atthrifting, how they're able to understand this concept and profit from it. I'm going to give you two examples. The first one, a good one; the second one, not so good.

我认为，一些公司明白产品重复利用的价值，而且正在推广它。许多智能时代的科技，也能帮助我们更好地减少使用，重复利用，勤俭节约。作为一个材料学家，我一直在研究过去二十年企业在节俭方面取得的成效，研究它们如何理解节俭这个概念，并通过节俭获取利润。我给讲你们讲两个例子。第一个是好的，第二个是不太好的。

 

02:37

The first is the automotive industry. Not always known as the most innovative or creative of industries, but it turns out,they're really, really good at recycling their products. Ninety-five percent ofevery single car that goes on the road gets recycled here. And of that car,about 75 percent of the entire car actually gets used again. That includes, of course, the old steel and aluminum but then also the plastics from the fender and the interiors, glass from the windows and the windshield and also the tires. There's a mature and successful industry that deals with these old carsand basically recycles them and puts them back into use as new cars or other new products. Even as we move towards battery-powered cars, there are companies that claim they can recycle up to 90 percent of the 11 million tons of batteries that are going to be with us in 2020. That, I think, is not perfect,but it's certainly good, and it's getting better.

第一个例子是关于汽车制造业的。没有多少人会认为这是一个极具创新的产业，而事实上，这个产业在回收再利用方面做得十分出色。所有在路上跑的汽车中，有95% 都会被回收循环使用。而每辆车75%的部分又会被回收重新使用。回收的部分包括，废弃的钢和铝，还有那些来自挡泥板和汽车内部的塑料制品，车窗玻璃和挡风玻璃，以及轮胎。有一个成熟的、成功的产业，专门处理报废车辆，对它们进行回收，并重新利用到新的汽车或其他产品中去。甚至我们的电动汽车，一些公司宣称，它们最多可以回收再利用到 2020 年所生产的 1100 万吨电池中的90%。我认为，这并不完美，但已经非常不错了，而且还有改善的空间。

 

03:31

The industry that's not doing so well is the architecture industry. One of the challenges with architecture has always been when we build up, we don't think about taking down. We don't dismantle, wedon't disassemble, we demolish. That's a challenge, because it ends up that about a third of all landfill waste in the US is architecture. We need to think differently about this. There are programs that can actually reduce some of this material.

在这一方面做得不太好的是建筑行业，其中一个原因是，我们只考虑建筑物建造，却不考虑拆卸的问题，我们不会拆卸或拆除建筑物，只会直接摧毁。这是一个挑战，因为美国垃圾填埋场中有三分之一都是建筑垃圾。我们应该想想怎么解决这个问题。有些做法可以减少建筑垃圾的产生。

 

03:56

A good example is this. These are actually bricks that are made from old demolition waste, which includes the glass, the rubble,the concrete. You put up a grinder, put it all together, heat it up and make these bricks we can basically build more buildings from. But it's only afraction of what we need.

举一个比较好的例子，这些砖头是用建筑废渣料生产的，其成分包括玻璃、瓦砾和混凝土。把它们放进研磨机中，加热，生产出的砖头又能被用于更多建筑中去了。但这只是很小的一部分。

 

04:11

My hope is that with big data and geotagging, we canactually change that, and be more thrifty when it comes to buildings. If there's a building down the block which is being demolished, are there materials there that the new building being built here can use? Can we use that, the ability to understand that all the materials available in that building are still usable? Can we then basically put them into a new building, without actually losing any value in the process?

我希望，我们能利用大数据和地理定位改变这种状况，把节俭这个概念运用到建筑业中。如果不远处有一栋楼正在被拆毁，拆下来的这些材料中有没有一些是这边的新建筑物可以使用的？我们是否可以认为这个建筑物所有的建筑材料仍然可用？我们是否可以将它们用于建造新的建筑物且不丧失它们自身的任何价值？

 

04:41

So now let's think about other industries. What are other industries doing to create thrift? Well, it turns out that there are plenty of industries that are also thinking about their own waste and what we can do with it. A simple example is the waste that they basically belch out as part of industrial processes. Most metal smelters give off an awful lot of carbon dioxide. Turns out, there's a company called Land Detector that'sactually working in China and also soon in South Africa, that's able to takethat waste gas -- about 700,000 tons per smelter -- and then turn it into about400,000 tons of ethanol, which is equivalent to basically powering 250,000, orquarter of a million, cars for a year. That's a very effective use of waste.

让我们再想想其他行业。其它行业是如何节俭的呢？现在许多行业都在思考如何解决生产废料这个问题。一个简单的例子，就是在工业生产中排放的工业废气。许多金属冶炼厂会在生产中排放大量的二氧化碳。我发现一个叫 Land Detector 的公司在中国和南非开展工作，他们搜集工业废气——一个冶炼厂可以搜集70万吨废气——这些废气能转换成40万吨乙醇，这相当于给25万量汽车提供了一年的燃料。这是有效利用生产废料的方法。

 

05:24

How about products more close to home? This is a simple solution. And it, again, takes the idea of reducing, reusing, but then also with economic advantage. So it's a simple process of changing from a cut and sew, where typically between 20 and 30 materials are used which are cut from a large cloth and then sewn together or even sometimes glued, they changed it and said that they just knitted the shoe. The advantage with this is not just a simplification of the process, it's also, "I've got one material. Ihave zero waste," and then also, "I'm able to potentially recyclethat at the end of its life."

那我们身边的产品呢？这里有一个简单的办法，还是基于减少使用，重复利用的概念，但同时能给经济带来好处。这是一个简单的流程，不再采用需要将 20到30种材料的裁剪和缝制——即从大块布料中剪下再缝制或粘在一起的做法，而是改用编织的方式。优点不仅仅是简化了流程，而且我只需要一样材料，没有浪费任何东西，以及在它寿终正寝时，我还可以对它回收利用。

 

 

05:58

Digital manufacturing is also allowing us to do this more effectively. In this case, it's actually creating the theoretical limit of strength for a material: you cannot get any stronger for the amount of material than this shape. So it's a basic simple block, but the idea is, I can extrapolate this, I can make it into large formats, I can make it into buildings, bridges, but also airplane wings and shoes. The idea here is, I'm minimizing the amount of material.

数字化制造也可以帮助我们进行更有效的回收再利用。这个例子说明了一种材料的理论极限强度：你不可能找到比这强度更强的模型。这是一个基本的、简单的方块，但我可以在此基础上进行延伸，并制作一些大型的东西，比如用来建楼、造桥，还可以用来制作飞机机翼和普通的鞋子。这背后的逻辑就是将使用的材料降到最少。

 

06:24

Here's a good example from architecture. Typically,these sorts of metal nodes are used to hold up large tent structures. In this case, it in was in the Hague, along a shopping center. They used 1600 of the materials on the left. The difference is, by using the solution on the right,they cut down the number of steps from seven to one, because the one on the left is currently welded, the one on the right is simply just printed. And itwas able to reduce waste to zero, cost less money and also, because it's madeout of steel, can be eventually recycled at the end of its life.

这是一个来自建筑业的很好的例子。这个金属连接节点通常被用于固定大的帐篷结构。这是关于荷兰海牙的一个大型购物中心，他们用了1600个左边的节点，而用右边这个节点的不同之处在于，他们将安装步骤从7步减到了1步，因为左边的这个是焊接而成的，而右边这个是直接打印出来的。这么做，可以实现零浪费，还能降低成本，同时，因为它是钢制品，以后可以重新回收再利用。

 

06:57

Nature also is very effective at thrift. Think aboutit: nature has zero waste. Everything is useful for another process. So, inthis case, nanocellulose, which is basically one of the very fine building blocks of cellulose, which is one of the materials that makes trees strong, youcan isolate it, and it works very much like carbon fiber. So, take that from a tree, form it into fibers, and then those fibers can strengthen things, such as airplanes, buildings, cars. The advantage of this, though, is it's not just bioderived, comes from a renewable resource, but also that it is transparent,so it can be used in consumer electronics, as well as food packaging. Not bad for something that basically comes from the backyard.

大自然在节约方面也是极其高效的，想一想：大自然不会生产任何垃圾，每一样东西都能物尽其用。例如，纳米纤维，它是纤维素极细微的组成部分，纤维素是能让树木如此坚固的物质之一，你可以对它进行分离，它的性质跟碳纤维非常相似。从树木中提取纤维素，接着再制成纤维，然后这些纤维能用来加固东西，例如飞机、建筑物、汽车。这一做法的优点是，纳米纤维不仅仅来自于可再生的生物资源，同时它还是透明的，因此可以应用在消费电子产品和食品包装上。这种再利用还不错吧！

 

07:39

Another one from the biosource is synthetic spidersilk. Now, it's very hard to actually create spider silk naturally. You canbasically get it from spiders, but in large numbers, they tend to kill eachother, eat each other, so you've got a problem with creating it, in the sameway you do with regular silk. So what you can do is instead take the DNA fromthe spider, and put it into various different things. You can put it intobacteria, you can put it into yeast, you can put it into milk. And what you cando then is, the milk or the bacteria produce in much larger volumes and thenfrom that, spin a yarn and then create a fabric or a rope. Again, bioderived,has incredible strength -- about the same as Kevlar -- so they're using it inthings like bulletproof vests and helmets and outdoor jackets. It has a greatperformance. But again, it's bioderived, and at the end of its life, itpotentially can go back into the soil and get composted to again be potentiallyused as a new material.

另一种来自生物界的材料是合成蜘蛛丝。用天然的方法制造蜘蛛丝是很难的，你只能从蜘蛛获得蜘蛛丝，但蜘蛛数量多了，它们会自相残杀、互相蚕食，所以如果你像收集蚕丝那样去收集蜘蛛丝的话，就会遇到问题。那么，你可以做的就是从蜘蛛中提取 DNA，并将它放到不同的地方培养。你可以把它放到细菌里，放到酵母里，放到牛奶里。之后，你能做的是，当牛奶或细菌产生大量的丝状物后，提取出来纺纱，接着制作织物或绳子。它来源于生物，有着惊人的强度——大约和芳纶纤维一样强，因此可以用来制作防弹背心和头盔，以及户外夹克，性能十分出众。但别忘了，这是生物衍生物，当它不再有使用价值时，就可以变成土地里的肥料，作为一种新的东西重新被利用。

 

08:32

I'd like to leave you with one last form which isbiobased, but this, I think, is like the ultimate thrift. Think about theposter child for conspicuous consumption. It's the water bottle. We have toomany of them, they're basically going everywhere, they're a problem in theocean. What do we do with them? This process is able not just to recycle them,but to recycle them infinitely. Why is that interesting? Because when we thinkabout reusing and recycling, metals, glass, things like that, can be recycledas many times as you like. There's metal in your car that may well have comefrom a 1950s Oldsmobile, because you can recycle it infinitely with no loss ofperformance. Plastics offer about once or twice of recycling, whether it's abottle, whether it's a chair -- whatever it is, if it's carpet -- after two timesof recycling, whether it goes back into another chair, etc, it tends to losestrength, it's no longer of any use. This, though, just using a few enzymes, isable to recycle it infinitely. I take a bottle or a chair or some other plasticproduct, I basically put it in with a few enzymes, they break it apart, theybasically put it back into its original molecules. And then from thosemolecules, you can build another chair or carpet or bottle. So, the cycle isinfinite. The advantage with that, of course, is that you have potentially zeroloss of material resources. Again, the perfect idea of thrift.

最后，我还想给你们介绍一种基于生物的产品，而我觉得，这才是终极的节俭。想想挥霍式消费的典型代表，那就是矿泉水瓶。我们有非常多的这样的水瓶，它们无处不在，是海洋污染重要来源之一。那我们能做些什么呢？我们不仅应该让水瓶可以回收再利用，而且应该让这个过程无限进行下去。为什么这点很有意思呢？因为像那些能重复利用和回收再利用的东西，比如金属、玻璃等等，都能被回收再利用很多次。比如你的汽车的金属配件，可能来自19世纪50年代的奥尔兹莫比尔汽车。因为你可以无限地回收这些金属，没有一点损耗。而塑料只能被回收再利用一到两次，不管是塑料水瓶，还是塑料椅子——不论是什么，还比如地毯——如果它被回收过两次后，不论被用来制作椅子还是其他东西，它的强度都会降低，不能再被用来制作任何东西了。然而我们可以利用酶，让塑料可以无限回收再利用。比如，我可以拿塑料瓶、塑料椅或其他塑料制品，在里面加入一些酶，酶会将它们分解成最原始的分子形态。之后，用这些分子，重新制作塑料椅、地毯和塑料水瓶。所以，这可以是个无限循环。当然，这样做的优点是，你不会浪费任何物质资源。再强调一次，这是一个节俭的好方法。

 

09:50

So in conclusion, I just want to have you thinkabout -- if you make anything, if you're any part of a design firm, if youbasically are refurbishing your house -- any aspect where you make something,think about how that product could potentially be used as a second life, orthird life or fourth life. Design in the ability for it to be taken apart.That, to me, is the ultimate thrift, and I think that's basically what mygrandmother would love.

总结一下，我想让大家思考——如果你需要制作什么东西，如果你是设计公司的一员，如果你需要翻修你的房子——不论你想做什么东西，都请想一想，这个产品二次利用，三次利用，四次利用后都能拿来做什么。产品应该被设计成易被分解的。我认为这就是终极的节俭，我想这会是我祖母希望看到的。