Wasted: How We Squander Time, Money, and Natural Resources-and What We Can Do About It, reviewed

We look at the latest timely and relevant book by Byron Reese and, Scott Hoffman you buy the book from Amazon here.

Wasted: How We Squander Time, Money, and Natural Resources-and What We Can Do About It, reviewed

It makes sense to write this book now, to look more carefully, and critically at how recycle, what happens, does it work, is it cost and energy effective. Reese and Hoffman take us up on a deep dive into this world, and examine a variety of themes and topics within this area. The book is definitely thought provoking, informative and worth reading.

Later into the book it also tackles wider topics, or rather perhaps less obvious ones. We found this interesting, and again thought provoking. Our one main caveat with the book is that the final aspect of the subtitle ‘what we can do about it’ seemed quite thin relative to the depth and success with which they outlined and described the issues. They worked really well to examine, is it actually worth recycling or not?

However their proposed answer to their own question, both here, and elsewhere felt a little ambiguous and slightly sitting on the face. In fairness you could argue that no one has good, definitive answers to some of these questions yet, but as the book’s title implied it was going to get it’s teeth into all aspects of this topic, we felt they could have gone a little further in attempting to answer this, key, question.

Overall we still enjoyed reading the book, and would recommend it to others, but it is clearly on part of the education + awareness piece. Still worth reading, check it out.

More about the book ->

Waste. We spend a great deal of energy trying to avoid it, but once you train your eyes to look for it, you’ll see it all around you—in your home, your business, and your everyday life.

In Wasted, futurist Byron Reese and entrepreneur Scott Hoffman take readers on a fascinating journey through this modern world of waste, drawing on science, economics, and human behavior to envision what a world with far less of it—or none of it at all—might look like. Along the way, they explore thought-provoking issues such as

• why the United States got a higher proportion of its energy from renewable sources in 1950 than it does today

• whether the amount of gold in unused mobile phones can be extracted for profit

• how switching to water fountains on a single route from Singapore to Newark could prevent the use of 3,400 plastic bottles—on each flight

• whether the amount of money you save buying goods in bulk is offset by the amount you lose when some spoil.

Ultimately, the question of reducing waste is scientific, philosophical, and, most of all, complex. According to Reese and Hoffman, the rush toward simple answers has often led to well-meaning efforts that cause more waste than they save. The only way we can hope to make progress is to treat waste as the complicated issue it is.

While the authors don’t promise easy answers, in this compelling book they take an important step toward solutions by examining the questions at play, giving actionable steps, and ensuring that you’ll never see the world of waste the same way again.

About Byron

Byron is an Austin based serial tech entrepreneur with two NASDAQ IPO’s and the sale of three companies that he founded. He is a recognized authority on AI and holds a number of technology patents.

Byron speaks around world to both technical and non-technical audiences, and his keynotes and appearances include SXSW, TEDx Austin, Google, Nvidia, FedEx and Fortune 1000 companies (Dell Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Oticon, Swisslog) and universities Rice (University of Texas, Queen’s University, TWU) and futurist conferences (TimeMachine, PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam, Wolfram Data Summit, and the IEEE Conference) among others.

He is the bestselling author of three books on technology. “The Fourth Age not only discusses what the rise of A.I. will mean for us, it also forces readers to challenge their preconceptions. And it manages to do all this in a way that is both entertaining and engaging.” —The New York Times

 Today Byron is the CEO of JJ Kent, a venture-backed technology company using proprietary AI tools to create new products that delight consumers. Byron has served on numerous public and private boards and presently resides on the board of directors for GigaOm, a technology research and analysis firm focused on helping business leaders understand the implications of emerging technologies and their impacts on business, media, and society.

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