Waste

With Christmas drawing near,we all spare a thought for those less fortunate than us. Although the reasons behind difference in income can be quite complex and diverseit is undeniable that the world would be a much better place, with far less misery, were we not to waste so much.

Not wanting to linger on this thought too deep or for too long let me just give one simple and concrete example. Every running competition I've been to supplies the runners with water every 5/10 Km, usually in bottles of 25 or 33cl. Thing is, the ammount is totally out of sync; I, for instance, only take 2 or 3 sips at a time, thus wasting around 15cl of water per bottle. To realize the impact of such a waste, take a look at the Lisbon Half-Marathon and do some simple math.There were 4 support set-points, which leads to 4 x 15 = 60cl of wasted water per athlete. It means that all the 7000 athletes running that day, together, led to a waste of 4200 liters of water, which for sure could have found better use.

Although certainly not the best example since it is not highly scalable (also certainly not the most striking one) it gives us a hint of the impact of some of the daily routines in our lifestyle. If you're still not convinced, just think about the ammount of (drinkable) water wasted during a shower, or while washing your teeth. Now multiply that by the number inhabitants in your city. Or in your country. Notice that by wasted I don't mean used, rather just the ammount that could have been saved by using a different method/procedure/technique. Point is, even if we are not able or willing to give up on our lifestyles there are some improvements which can be made in terms of efficiency, with huge impact when aggregated.