Waste Management

Time, money, energy – the fun we have trying to save a little bit here and a little bit there. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves, and all that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being conscious and conscientious about these areas. In fact, that’s what it should be all about – taking control. But I do sometimes wonder about the context. Thrift has its place in this world, certainly. Hell, there’s enough plastic, excessive living to last a good few lifetimes. And the culture of the daily time-devouring commute has destroyed many a balanced family life. But, still, I think there’s something to be said for how we view our savings.

In relation to time, for example, you don’t actually save time as such – as far as I can tell there are still 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and the rest. It’s more to do with how you spend that time. You can halve your journey home from work but if you then walk through the door earlier only to have a good old moan at your better half then I’m not sure whether that’s time well spent. You may have saved a couple of pennies here and there, which is great, but if you literally or metaphorically just stick it under your bed out of sheer fear of living a bit, where’s the value in that? And that’s what it’s about. Value. Oversimplified? Perhaps. It is true that sometimes some of us need to save something, anything simply to get us to the start line. And I'm not saying saving is wrong. But looking at the whole caboodle as all about how you spend/invest your time, money and energy to create value changes the dynamic. So if you’re going to do some saving, at least do it with some purpose, and hopefully that purpose will somewhere along the line have some bearing on enjoying life. Otherwise all that saving might actually turn out to be more about waste.