This TED Talk features materials scientist Andrew Dent, recorded live at TEDNYC 2017.

I'd like to 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 butchers.

It would come from presents.

She would put it in the jar, and then she would use it when it was needed.

When it was finished, whether it was tying up the roses,

tying up a part of my bike,

once if it finished with that, it would 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.

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 I want to use it for a canoe to paddle down a river. They understand the value, 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've 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. The 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. Current

at the moment, we have about 1.3 billion tons of material every year going into landfills.

2100 is going to be about 4 billion tons. See, instead, I prefer if we started

thrifting. And 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? The idea of completely

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