What is waste?

The word “waste” is used very frequently in life. Different people have different opinions about what constitutes waste. The definition of waste is different in different time periods.
Professor Robert Schiller, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, believes that having a large home is a waste. He argued like this: How convenient is it to order takeaways, order foods, etc. on the Internet, why should the kitchen be designed so big? In the era when computers and iPads are everywhere, there is not much need to store paper copies of file cabinets; when people are reading more and more on the screen, bookshelves are almost redundant; moreover, single people are Isn’t it necessary to have a separate bathroom?
Therefore, the Yale University professor believes that having a big house is often not necessarily the need to live in reality, but more to show that the owner is a successful person in business.

Economists like to use numbers to illustrate problems when analyzing social phenomena. One analysis is this: by dividing the total oil consumption of each country by the population figure of the country, the average oil consumption of the country is obtained. As a result, the per capita oil consumption of developed countries is the per capita consumption of developing countries. 30 times the amount. If the living standards of people in developing countries rise to the level of developed countries, it means that their per capita oil consumption will increase by 30 times. Then, the total oil consumption in the world will be 10 times that of the present.
If this global consumption is spread according to the current actual per capita consumption, it is enough to support 80 billion people living on the earth, but even according to the most optimistic estimates of experts, our planet can only support the survival of 9.5 billion people. .
The above analysis shows that, first of all, the world’s existing oil resources are not enough to simultaneously meet the substantial increase in consumption in developing countries, while developed countries continue to maintain the current consumption; secondly, there is a great waste of oil consumption in developed countries, especially In the United States, for example, the average consumption of oil in Western Europe is only half that of the United States, and the average life satisfaction of the people, some of which are the main criteria, such as financial status after retirement, health, newborn child mortality, life expectancy and one year. The number of days in the holiday is higher than in the United States. Therefore, in order to pursue sustainable development, developed countries must reduce oil consumption and eliminate waste is a top priority.

Looking at the waste in real life, it is even more convincing. A friend lives in a very good community. Every day he jogs in the community for 30 minutes and exercises. After listening to a friend, I bought a treadmill and put it in the living room. After two weeks of freshness, the treadmill basically became the living room. The bad thing is that he even stopped the jogging in the community. Not only is the machine wasting money, but it also takes up the place, cultivates laziness, and damages health. Is it not bad?
A person who likes to drink a cup of “Starbucks” every day is taken for granted. Each cup of Starbucks 30 yuan, if you use Nesspreso coffee machine to make coffee at home, about 5 yuan per cup, can save 25 × 365 = 9125 yuan a year, minus the cost of a one-time purchase of coffee machine more than 2,000 yuan, a year can save 7000 Yu Yuan is equivalent to one employee’s salary for one month.
A neighbor told me that he ordered food from a nearby restaurant and that the restaurant delivered the food to the door so that he would not have to go to the supermarket often – he said it would save time and money. I am surprised. How do you call a takeaway every day to save money more than cooking yourself? He told me that it is true that it is not necessary to spend less money, but the problem is that you often go to the supermarket to go to the food store. You will certainly not be able to buy a lot of unnecessary things. In the long run, ordering is definitely a saving.
I think so too. I remember once I went to the supermarket to buy batteries and talcum powder. The result was that the shopping basket was filled with many other things, and it cost more than 500 yuan at checkout!