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 it in 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 go back 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.
我們來談談節約。 節約的概念是減少、再利用、回收, 但還帶著一層經濟上的含意, 我認為這點很有改革的潛力。 我祖母懂節約。 這是她裝繩子的罐子。 她從來不買繩子。 基本上她都自己收集。 可能是肉販給的, 或是附在禮物上的。 她會放在罐子裡,要用的時候再拿。 不管是用繩子來綁玫瑰花, 還是我的腳踏車零件, 只要繩子用好,就會放回罐子裡。 這是節約的好方法;用你所需, 因為你沒買東西,所以也省了錢。
Kids also inherently know this idea. When you want to throw out a cardboard box, the average kid will say, "Don't! I want to use 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 counterpoint 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.
小孩也天生就會這招。 你想扔紙箱子的時候, 一般小孩都會說:「不要丟, 我想拿來做機器人的頭, 或是用來做獨木舟, 可以在河裡划水。」 他們了解物品再生的價值。 我想節約是我們所處的 這個時代的完美對立面。 現在所有商品都能被取代。 我們拿到耀眼、嶄新、炫麗的玩具, 基本上是因為我們丟了舊的。 重點是,當下那一刻當然很美好, 但問題是,如果我們繼續這樣下去, 我們又會製造出麻煩。
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. We used to be good at thrifting. My grandmother, again, used to use old seed packets to paper the bathroom walls.
麻煩在於真的無地可容。 當你丟了某樣東西, 最後它會在垃圾掩埋場。 基本上掩埋場不會消失, 反而會一直增加。 現在我們每年有 13 億噸的東西 進了掩埋場。 到了 2100 年大約會有 40 億噸。 所以我希望大家開始節約。 這意味著我們要思考材料, 在這些材料變成商品、 被使用過後, 以及在它們壽終正寢時: 它們何時可再次被利用? 這個概念會完全改變 我們思考廢棄物的方式, 廢棄物不在是個骯髒的詞彙── 我們幾乎刪除了「廢棄物」這個詞。 我們要找的就是資源。 資源會變成商品, 之後可以再變成另一個商品。 以前我們很擅長節約。 我祖母以前常用舊的種子袋 貼在浴室當壁紙。
I think, though, there are companies out there who understand this value and are promoting it. And a lot of the technologies that have 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 at thrifting, 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.
我知道市面上 有些公司懂得這個價值, 也在宣傳這個價值。 許多開發給智能時代的科技, 同樣也能被改造,減少、再利用, 且更有效能的節約。 身為材料科學家, 我追蹤了 20 年, 來看公司行號如何聰明節約, 他們是怎麼能了解這個概念, 並從中獲利。 我舉兩個例子來說明。 第一個是很好的例子; 第二個不太好。
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 of every 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 cars and 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.
第一個是汽車產業。 這行不是以創新、創意聞名的產業, 但是他們真的很擅長回收產品。 95% 在路上跑的車子 會回收到這裡。 至於車子本身大概 75% 的車體 會被重新利用。 這當然包含了舊方向盤和鋁, 而且還有擋泥板和車內的塑膠, 窗戶的玻璃和擋風玻璃, 以及輪胎。 有個成熟且成功的產業 在處理這些老舊汽車, 回收再利用車輛, 讓它們變成新車或其它新產品。 甚至在我們朝電動汽車邁進的時候, 還是有公司主張,他們能從 1100 噸電池中回收高達九成, 這些電池在 2020 年 就會再給我們利用。 我想這雖不完美, 但肯定很好,而且會變得更好。
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, we don'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.
做得不太好的產業是建築業。 他們一直以來的挑戰在於 我們蓋的時候沒想過要拆。 我們不分解、不拆開,我們破壞。 這是個挑戰, 因為美國掩埋場中三分之一的垃圾 來自建築業。 我們得要換個角度來思考這件事。 現在有些程式可以做到減少材料。
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 a fraction of what we need.
這裡有個好例子。 這些磚塊其實是用廢建材做的, 裡面包含了玻璃、碎石和混凝土。 只要架起一個研磨機, 全部放一起,加熱, 我們就能用這些磚蓋起更多的建築。 但這只是我們所需的一小部分。
My hope is that with big data and geotagging, we can actually 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?
我希望透過大數據和定位 能夠真正改變這一點, 並且在蓋建築的時候可以更節約。 如果下個街區有棟建築準備要拆, 那裡的舊建材 能用來蓋新建築嗎? 我們能否運用能力來理解 所有舊建築裡 可得的材料都能再利用? 我們能否就這樣把廢材蓋成新建物, 且在過程中毫不損失任何價值?
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's actually working in China and also soon in South Africa, that's able to take that waste gas -- about 700,000 tons per smelter -- and then turn it into about 400,000 tons of ethanol, which is equivalent to basically powering 250,000, or quarter of a million, cars for a year. That's a very effective use of waste.
現在我們來想想其他產業。 其他產業是怎麼做到節約? 其實有很多產業 也在思考自己的廢棄物, 以及能怎麼處理。 最簡單的例子就是他們直接 在生產過程中排除廢棄物。 許多金屬冶煉廠釋放 極大量的二氧化碳。 有間公司叫地察 (Land Detector), 在中國營運,不久後也會在南非, 他們能把廢氣── 每個熔爐大約是 70 萬噸── 變成 40 萬噸的乙醇, 這等於可以供 25 萬臺車 運行一整年。 用這個方式處理廢棄物的效益很高。
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. I have zero waste," and then also, "I'm able to potentially recycle that at the end of its life."
那居家用品呢? 有一個簡單的方法 同樣也是採用減少、再利用的概念, 但還包含了經濟優勢。 這個簡單的改造過程藉由裁縫, 通常會有二、三十種用過的東西, 從一大塊布剪下來,然後縫在一起, 有時候甚至要用黏的, 他們改裝後說,他們編了這支鞋。 這樣做的優點不只是簡化過程, 還有「我運用原料,做到零廢棄」, 加上「在這東西走到生命盡頭時, 我還能回收它」。
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.
數位化製造也讓我們 能更有效地達成這個目標。 在這個部分,真的是幫原料 製造一個理論上的強度極限: 你無法讓這麼多的原料變得更強韌, 除非用這個形狀。 這是基本磚, 概念是,我可以向外推, 可以做成很大型的樣式, 可以做成建築、橋梁, 還有機翼和鞋子。 這裡的概念是,我減少原料的用量。
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 it was able to reduce waste to zero, cost less money and also, because it's made out of steel, can be eventually recycled at the end of its life.
我來舉一個建築上的好例子。 這些金屬接頭常用來支撐大帳篷。 這個例子是在海牙, 一個購物中心旁邊。 他們用了 1600 個左邊的原料。 不同的是,改用右邊的之後, 他們把七個步驟減少到只剩一個, 因為左邊要用焊接的, 而右邊只要用印的。 所以能做到零廢棄, 減少支出, 還有因為這是鋼材做的, 最終可以回收。
Nature also is very effective at thrift. Think about it: nature has zero waste. Everything is useful for another process. So, in this case, nanocellulose, which is basically one of the very fine building blocks of cellulose, which is one of the materials that makes trees strong, you can 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.
大自然在節約上也做得很成功。 你們想想:大自然是零廢棄。 每個東西對某個過程都有助益。 這個例子是奈米纖維素, 基本上這是非常精細的纖維素構件, 也是讓樹木茁壯的元素之一, 你可以將它分離,就能達到 非常像碳纖維的功能。 所以從樹上分解,做成纖維狀, 這些纖維可以強化東西, 例如飛機、建築和汽車。 它的優點不只是從生物衍生而來, 來自可再生資源, 而且是透明的, 所以可以用在電子產品 和食物包裝上。 自家後院就有的東西還算不錯。
Another one from the biosource is synthetic spider silk. Now, it's very hard to actually create spider silk naturally. You can basically get it from spiders, but in large numbers, they tend to kill each other, eat each other, so you've got a problem with creating it, in the same way you do with regular silk. So what you can do is instead take the DNA from the spider, and put it into various different things. You can put it into bacteria, you can put it into yeast, you can put it into milk. And what you can do then is, the milk or the bacteria produce in much larger volumes and then from 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 in things like bulletproof vests and helmets and outdoor jackets. It has a great performance. But again, it's bioderived, and at the end of its life, it potentially can go back into the soil and get composted to again be potentially used as a new material.
另一個來自生物資源的例子 是合成蜘蛛絲。 真的要做天然蜘蛛絲很難。 你可以從蜘蛛身上取得絲, 但牠們大多會自相殘殺、吃掉彼此, 所以要製造會有問題, 如果你用和一般絲同樣方式。 所以可以做的 是從蜘蛛身上取 DNA, 然後放進不同的東西裡, 可以放進細菌裡、酵母裡, 放進牛奶裡。 接下來你可以做的是…… 牛奶或細菌會製造出更大的量, 你就可以從中紡紗,製作布料或繩索。 同樣的生物衍生、無比強韌, 和刻維拉纖維差不多, 所以被用來像是防彈衣、安全帽 和戶外夾克等等。 效能很好。 同樣的,生物衍生, 而且在它的生命盡頭 能夠回歸大地、拿來堆肥, 有機會再拿來做成新的材料。
I'd like to leave you with one last form which is biobased, but this, I think, is like the ultimate thrift. Think about the poster child for conspicuous consumption. It's the water bottle. We have too many of them, they're basically going everywhere, they're a problem in the ocean. 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 think about reusing and recycling, metals, glass, things like that, can be recycled as many times as you like. There's metal in your car that may well have come from a 1950s Oldsmobile, because you can recycle it infinitely with no loss of performance. Plastics offer about once or twice of recycling, whether it's a bottle, whether it's a chair -- whatever it is, if it's carpet -- after two times of recycling, whether it goes back into another chair, etc, it tends to lose strength, it's no longer of any use. This, though, just using a few enzymes, is able to recycle it infinitely. I take a bottle or a chair or some other plastic product, I basically put it in with a few enzymes, they break it apart, they basically put it back into its original molecules. And then from those molecules, you can build another chair or carpet or bottle. So, the cycle is infinite. The advantage with that, of course, is that you have potentially zero loss of material resources. Again, the perfect idea of thrift.
最後我想介紹給大家的是 以生物為基礎, 但我想這也是極致的節約。 想想炫耀型消費的最佳範例。 水瓶。 我們有太多水瓶,基本上到處都是, 是海洋裡的大麻煩。 我們該拿它們怎麼辦? 這個過程不只是要回收, 而是要無限的回收。 這有什麼意思? 因為每當我們想到再利用和回收, 金屬、玻璃這類的東西, 你愛回收幾次都可以。 你車子裡的金屬 可能來自 1950 年代的老爺車, 因為你可以無限回收, 而且它的功效絲毫不減。 塑膠大約能回收一到兩次, 不管是瓶子、椅子, 還是地毯, 兩次回收後,不管是回收成 另一張椅子還是什麼, 都會失去它的強度,變得一無是處。 針對這點,其實只要用一點酶 就能讓它永久回收。 我拿瓶子、椅子或其它塑膠製品, 放進一點酶,將之分解, 就會將它還原到最初的分子。 然後從那些分子, 你就可以做出另一個 椅子、地毯或瓶子。 因此循環是無限的。 當然,這個優點是 你能有零損失的原料資源。 同樣是節約的絕佳點子。
So in conclusion, I just want to have you think about -- if you make anything, if you're any part of a design firm, if you basically are refurbishing your house -- any aspect where you make something, think about how that product could potentially be used as a second life, or third 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 my grandmother would love.
結論是,我只希望大家想想, 如果你製造任何東西, 如果你是設計公司的一員, 如果你正在改建房子, 不管你在做什麼, 想想那個產品 在它第二、第三、第四次生命中, 可以如何再利用。 用讓它能被分解的方式來設計它。 對我來說,這就是節約的極致, 我想這也是我祖母會喜歡的方式。
(Applause)
(掌聲)