“二手”專家說:“你能做的比較好的事情就是不必買更多的東西

“二手”專家說:“你能做的最好的事情就是不必買更多的東西

Author Adam Minter remembers two periods of grief after his mother died in 2015: the intense sadness of her death, followed by the challenge of sorting through what he calls "the material legacy of her life."

作家亞當·明特還記得母親在2015年去世后的兩個悲傷時期:母親去世帶來的強烈悲傷，以及整理他所說的“母親的物質遺產”的挑戰(zhàn)。

Over the course of a year, Minter and his sister worked through their mother's possessions until only her beloved china was left. Neither one of them wanted to take the china — but neither could bear to throw it out. Instead, they decided to donate it.

在一年的時間里，明特和他的妹妹整理著他們母親的遺物，直到只剩下她心愛的瓷器。他們倆誰也不想拿走瓷器，但誰也不忍心把它扔掉。相反，他們決定捐了它。

Minter had spent nearly two decades reporting on the waste and recycling industries. Now he began looking into the market for secondhand goods, both domestically and in Africa and Asia.

明特花了近20年的時間報道廢物和回收工業(yè)?，F(xiàn)在，他開始在國內以及非洲和亞洲尋找二手商品的市場。

"Your average thrift store in the United States only sells about one-third of the stuff that ends up on its shelves," he says. "The rest of the stuff ends up somewhere else."

“在美國，普通的舊貨店只賣出貨架上商品的三分之一，”他說。“剩下的東西最后都去了別的地方。”

Minter's new book, Secondhand, explores the afterlife of donated clothes and electronics. His previous book, Junkyard Planet, was about the recycling industry.

明特的新書《二手》探討了捐贈的衣服和電子產品之后的用處。他的上一本書《垃圾場星球》是關于回收行業(yè)的。

On the rise of "cleanup" companies, which help people sort through and dispose of their possessions

隨著“清理”公司的興起，這些公司幫助人們整理和處理他們的財產

As populations age, and children move away from home, you have an increasingly elderly population in the United States, for example, that wants to dispose of things in order to retire. And that means that they need to get rid of their stuff that they've accumulated for a lifetime.

例如，隨著人口老齡化，兒童背井離鄉(xiāng)，美國的老年人口越來越多，他們都想要處理一些物品，以便退休。這意味著他們需要處理掉他們積累了一輩子的東西。

It's really troubling in some ways, because depending on where you are, people can actually pay more per square foot for a storage unit than they would for residential rental space. So we're actually paying more to store our stuff than we are to store ourselves.

這在某些方面確實很麻煩，因為根據(jù)你所在的位置，人們實際上可以為每平方英尺的儲物空間支付比住宅租賃空間更高的價格。所以我們儲存東西的花費比儲存自己的要多。

For the reuse industry, it's sort of a mixed blessing. The reuse industry thrives on having access to stuff — in particular good stuff. But increasingly, what we see in the United States in particular is that the quality of the stuff that people are acquiring — because we're acquiring more every year — is declining.

對于再利用行業(yè)來說，這是一件喜憂參半的事情。再利用行業(yè)的繁榮在于人們可以得到東西——尤其是好東西。但是，我們在美國所看到的是，人們購買商品的質量正在下降，因為我們每年都在購買更多的商品。

On the declining quality of electronic goods

電子產品質量的下降

If you think back say, 20, 25 years ago, a television that was 10 years old was something that could be reused. It could be refurbished and reused. ... They were very heavy, but they were also very robust. But these days, you can go and you can buy yourself a flat-panel television at an electronics retailer. I saw it over the recent Black Friday period and you can buy that flat panel for $150. But in a sense, you get what you pay for. You get a cheap television that maybe will last three years.

如果你回想一下，20到25年前，一臺有10年歷史的電視機是可以再利用的。它可以翻新和再利用。它們很重，但也很結實。但現(xiàn)在，你可以去電子產品零售商那里買一臺平板電視。我在最近的黑色星期五期間看到過，你可以花150美元買到平板電腦。但從某種意義上說，一分錢一分貨。你買了一臺便宜的電視機，也許能用三年。

On how the environmental impact of stuff is more on the manufacturing side

對環(huán)境的影響更多的是在制造方面

A "life cycle assessment" is basically where somebody goes and looks at the full environmental impact of a product — say a smartphone — from manufacturing to disposal and looks at what the air pollution impacts are, the mining impacts, the carbon impacts. The one thing we do know is that the biggest impact of most products is the manufacturing side.

“生命周期評估”基本上是指一個人去看一件產品(比如智能手機)從制造到處理的全部環(huán)境影響，然后看它對空氣污染的影響是什么，對采礦的影響，對碳的影響。我們知道的一件事是，大多數(shù)產品的最大影響是制造方面。

So if you want to reduce the environmental impact of your consumption, the best way to do that is to not manufacture more stuff. In that sense, the best thing you can do is not buy more stuff.

所以如果你想減少你的消費對環(huán)境的影響，最好的方法就是不要制造更多的東西。從這個意義上說，你能做的最好的事情就是不買更多的東西。

On where goods go to die

商品最終流向哪里

They end up in the landfill or the incinerator. Everything wears out eventually and everything gets tossed out. That's the fate of stuff.

它們最終會進入垃圾填埋場或焚化爐。所有的東西最終都會磨損，所有的東西都會被扔掉。這就是商品的命運。