Jane Powerson time-wasting.
Time-wasting is one of the most efficient ways of making a negative impact on the planet. I'm not talking about wasting one's own time: I'm talking about the high-handed appropriation of other people's time, the mentality that puts one's own convenience before that of others.
Some of the greatest culprits are corporations and (some) State and semi-State bodies. In the case of the former, wasting your time is a well-honed part of their business plan.
Take, for instance, the customer service helpline, for (say) a large communications company. You are left dangling in the queue for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or longer. Sometimes, you hang up in frustration, and - hey presto - they've just saved five minutes of employee time, because nobody had to deal with your call. But for every five minutes they have saved, the poor eejits clinging to the phone (that's you and me) have usually lost somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes.
And even if you do decide to hang on until the bitter end, you've spent far more time than is decent waiting for five minutes of that particular company's time - and are forced to retrench on your time expenditure for the rest of the day.
If one is unfortunate enough to be dealing with certain state or semi-state bodies, they devour your time with lusty abandon - not really on purpose, but because no-one wants to shoulder the responsibility of giving a straight answer. So you are passed up the chain of command, with your query gathering a chilly coating of frustration with every repetition - like an ever-swelling snowball being pushed up a hill.
If we were able to add up all those wasted limbo minutes and put a price on them, it would represent a shocking waste of money, as well as a great big pot of ill-feeling. The damage is double when it is a State-funded organisation, because it is being financed by your taxes (to waste your time).
We can never manufacture new time to take the place of that which has been stolen from us earlier, so we complete our day's obligations later (or put them on the long finger), or we take short cuts. This can lead to more CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. For instance, longer work days mean more lights, heating and equipment being used; while short cuts (driving instead of walking, choosing ready-made meals instead of cooking, grabbing fast food on the hoof instead of eating at home) may "save" time, but they spend carbon-emitting energy.
Time-wasting, as I've tried to demonstrate, doesn't just squander time, it also sends out planet-harming (and head-wrecking) ripples from the original event.
If we are going to waste time let it be our own: we all need those vacant or pensive moments to gaze at cloud formations, or to study the insides of our eyelids, or to clean out the interstices of our keyboards. These are innocuous bouts of nothingness that give our brains an uncluttered space to recharge and regroup.
And speaking of time: I hope that this article hasn't wasted too much of yours.