“二手”专家说:“你能做的比较好的事情就是不必买更多的东西

“二手”专家说:“你能做的最好的事情就是不必买更多的东西

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."

作家亚当·明特还记得母亲在2015年去世后的两个悲伤时期:母亲去世带来的强烈悲伤，以及整理他所说的“母亲的物质遗产”的挑战。

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.

在一年的时间里，明特和他的妹妹整理着他们母亲的遗物，直到只剩下她心爱的瓷器。他们俩谁也不想拿走瓷器，但谁也不忍心把它扔掉。相反，他们决定捐了它。

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年的时间报道废物和回收工业。现在，他开始在国内以及非洲和亚洲寻找二手商品的市场。

"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."

“在美国，普通的旧货店只卖出货架上商品的三分之一，”他说。“剩下的东西最后都去了别的地方。”

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

明特的新书《二手》探讨了捐赠的衣服和电子产品之后的用处。他的上一本书《垃圾场星球》是关于回收行业的。

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

随着“清理”公司的兴起，这些公司帮助人们整理和处理他们的财产

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，随着人口老龄化，儿童背井离乡，美国的老年人口越来越多，他们都想要处理一些物品，以便退休。这意味着他们需要处理掉他们积累了一辈子的东西。

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.

这在某些方面确实很麻烦，因为根据你所在的位置，人们实际上可以为每平方英尺的储物空间支付比住宅租赁空间更高的价格。所以我们储存东西的花费比储存自己的要多。

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.

对于再利用行业来说，这是一件喜忧参半的事情。再利用行业的繁荣在于人们可以得到东西——尤其是好东西。但是，我们在美国所看到的是，人们购买商品的质量正在下降，因为我们每年都在购买更多的商品。

On the declining quality of electronic goods

电子产品质量的下降

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，一台有10年历史的电视机是可以再利用的。它可以翻新和再利用。它们很重，但也很结实。但现在，你可以去电子产品零售商那里买一台平板电视。我在最近的黑色星期五期间看到过，你可以花150美元买到平板电脑。但从某种意义上说，一分钱一分货。你买了一台便宜的电视机，也许能用三年。

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

对环境的影响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.

“生命周期评估”基本上是指一个人去看一件产品(比如智能手机)从制造到处理的全部环境影响，然后看它对空气污染的影响是什么，对采矿的影响，对碳的影响。我们知道的一件事是，大多数产品的最大影响是制造方面。

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.

所以如果你想减少你的消费对环境的影响，最好的方法就是不要制造更多的东西。从这个意义上说，你能做的最好的事情就是不买更多的东西。

On where goods go to die

商品最终流向哪里

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

它们最终会进入垃圾填埋场或焚化炉。所有的东西最终都会磨损，所有的东西都会被扔掉。这就是商品的命运。