Can we live with less stuff?

“There are 80 million power drills in America that are used an average of 13 minutes,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote in The New York Times. “Does everyone really need their own drill?”

Like me, you’ve probably heard this quote before. I’ve first heard it on an innovation talk and afterwards read it on the Blockchain Revolution book by Dan Tapscoot.

But, like me, did you thought how it would be to live without all the ‘power drills’ that we have?

I started walking around the house searching for stuff that I could, that I SHOULD, live without. For a start, I have 2 power drills. Yes, two! I remember that after finishing the renovation in my apartment, I wanted to put frames on the wall, shelves and things like this, so I bought this cool power drill that was also a power scroll drive. But to be also a scroll drive, it was not a strong enough power drill and could not make holes through ceramics. So I went down to the store and bought a conventional one. That was 8 years ago and I barely used them since.

It is so tempting to buy a power drill... it is faster, cheaper and more convenient to buy one than finding calling and having a handyman come to your place with their power drill do the work for you. You probable can find a retailer that sells you a power drill for $20 in a 2 km radius of wherever you live in the world.

Even though those $20 covers the costs of production, supply chain and marketing, it doesn’t take into consideration environmental externalities, like water consumption, deforestation, CO2 emissions and other pollution. It doesn’t take into account the disposal costs of the old and broken machines. The list of unconsidered costs is long. That is why people probably don’t make the calculation. But the cost exists. Ignoring it is not sustainable.

In a month me and my wife are going to visit the place where we met. We thought about doing a photo session with a drone. My first impulse was to BUY the drone. I’d probably use it again for 15 min. Thanks to this quote, I’m ok to pay a photographer with a drone to do our photo session, even if it is a bit less convenient and more expensive.

Wait to see my power drill and other stuff on e-bay really soon.