你怎么处置用过的东西?

你怎么处置用过的东西?

The first thing I learned about shopping after moving to Texas from the Caribbean was this: Go to Goodwill.

从加勒比海搬到德州后，我学到的关于购物的第一件事是:去二手商城。

When I needed my first hoodie, I went to Goodwill. When the carpet in my tiny studio got dirty, I bought an old vacuum cleaner at Goodwill. What I didn't know at the time was that I was participating in the billion-dollar industry of used hard goods.

当我需要我的第一件卫衣时，我去了二手商城。当我的小工作室的地毯脏了的时候，我在二手商城买了一个旧的吸尘器。当时我不知道的是，我参与了价值数十亿美元的二手实物行业。

After reading journalist Adam Minter's Secondhand: Travels In The New Global Garage Sale, I now understand how it works not only in our country but across the world.

在阅读了记者亚当•明特的新书《二手物品》:在全球旧货市场的旅行后，我现在明白了它不仅在美国，而且在世界各地是如何运作的。

I also understand that most people are hoarders, humans always put sentimental value on worthless items, and we now collect things and fill the space around us faster than at any other time in human history.

我也明白，大多数人都是囤积者，人类总是把情感价值放在毫无价值的物品上，我们现在收集东西，填充我们周围的空间，速度比人类历史上任何时候都要快。

In Secondhand, Minter starts with a strange question: What happens to people's stuff when they die? He answers the question in the first chapter — but this only opens a door into the hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse.

在《二手物品》一书中，明特以一个奇怪的问题开头:人死后他们的东西会怎样?他在第一章中回答了这个问题——但这只是打开了一扇通向隐藏的、价值数十亿美元的再利用行业的大门。

Minter is a superb storyteller who knows empathy is easier to connect with than numbers. In this book, there are plenty of both, but the people he interviews and the stories he tells are what make it an enthralling read.

明特是一个优秀的故事讲述者，他知道同理心比数字更容易沟通。在这本书中，既有同理心又又数字，但他采访的人和他讲述的故事使它成为一本迷人的读物。

Also, Minter has a great understanding of how people work and how we have morphed into something new as the world around us has changed. And he also gets the way those changes affect how we act, what we consume, and even how we define ourselves:

此外，明特对人们如何工作以及我们如何随着周围世界的变化而演变成新的事物有着深刻的理解。他还了解了这些变化如何影响我们的行为，我们的消费，甚至我们定义自己的方式:

"Historically, personal identity revolved around religion, civic participation, and pride of (oftentimes small) place. But as those traditional bonds disintegrate in the face of industrialization, urbanization, and secularization, brands and objects become a means to curate and project who we are."

“历史上，个人身份围绕着宗教、公民参与和地方自豪感(通常是小地方)。但随着工业化、城市化和世俗化，这些传统纽带解体，品牌和物品成为管理和投影我们是谁的一种手段。”

To say Secondhand is a book about reusing and reselling would be reductivist and unfair to Minter, considering the amount of research that went into it. Sure, reuse is at the core of the book, but it also deals with culture, consumption patterns on a global scale. It also offers a look into the relationships people establish with things and how those crumble with time and death, both of which help make even the sacred obsolete.

考虑到为写这本书而研究的数量，说《二手物品》是一本关于再利用使用和转卖的书，对明特来说是不公平的。当然，再利用是这本书的核心，但它也涉及文化、全球范围内的消费模式。它还让我们看到了人们与事物之间建立的关系，以及这些关系是如何随着时间和死亡而崩溃的，二者都使神圣的事物变得过时。

For example, according to the Association of Cleanout Professionals, "the fee for burning an altar is similar to what would be paid for a Buddhist shrine (one-meter diameter) or a futon: around one hundred dollars."

例如，根据清洁专业人员协会的说法，“烧一个祭坛的费用与买一个佛龛(直径一米)或一个蒲团的费用差不多:大约100美元。”

Besides making financial and trade data palatable, one thing Minter does exceptionally well is jump from place to place to give readers a good idea at what the market for secondhand goods looks like on a global scale without bogging down the narrative with too many numbers.

除了让金融和贸易数据变得容易接受之外，明特做得特别好的一件事就是从一个地方跳出来，让读者对二手物品市场在全球范围内的情况有一个很好的了解，同时又不会陷入太多数字的叙述。

While the "used-goods business doesn't stand a chance against the low-cost goods that have proliferated globally over the last forty years," the truth is that it will be decades before it phases out entirely. Secondhand it is a manual written with a lot of heart and with people — not things — as its focus. It's a book I'd recommend buying now instead of waiting for it to show up at your local thrift store.

尽管“二手物品业务在过去40年里没有机会与全球范围内扩散的低成本商品相抗衡”，但事实是，要完全淘汰它还需要几十年的时间。如果它曾经。二手书是一本用心写的手册，以人为中心，而不是以物为中心。我建议你现在就买这本书，而不是等着它出现在你当地的二手店里。