Undoubtedly, one of the chief reasons for all environmental pollution and spoiling of the natural balance is wastefulness. There is wastefulness at home, in production and in consumption.

It is as though mankind is in racing to see who can be most wasteful. Artificial needs are created and natural resources are used to meet them. As a result the natural balance is broken, and the air and water polluted.
The world population is gradually increasing, while due to wastefulness the world's limited natural resources are faced with the danger of speedy exhaustion. Moreover, pollutant waste produced through the consumption threatens all living creatures on the earth. Wastefulness lies at the root of most of these problems.

Wastefulness is ugly and harmful contempt for bounties. Excess and wastefulness lead to lack of contentment which destroys enthusiasm for work; it causes laziness, opens the door to complaining about life, and it destroys self-respect, and points the way to begging. There can be no excess in good, just as there is no good in excess. If you have intelligence, grow accustomed to contentment and try to be satisfied with little. Be satisfied with your lot and do not complain.
There is a great difference between frugality and stinginess. Frugality, however, shows respect for the bounty and is profitable. Yes, frugality is both a sort of thanks. Someone who is not frugal is certain to be abased and reduced to poverty.

Wastefulness is the opposite of thanks and belittles the bounty and causes loss. Since this is so, while eating the bread, we should think first of this bounty’s being sown in the ground, then becoming wheat, then being milled and made into flour, then being baked and distributed, all of which is brought about through the co-operation and labour of numerous people. Besides, keep in mind the millions of people suffering from hunger and famine dying in need of a loaf of bread which we dispose everyday.

When you eat, eat little, and do not eat again for four or five hours. Health lies in digestion. That is to say, eat so much as you can digest easily. "As for wastefulness, since it is to act contrary to wisdom, it swiftly receives its punishment, upsets the stomach and causes real appetite to be lost. The consumption of food in a reasonable and necessary amount assists in carrying the body, but if excess is consumed the body carries it. Excessive food makes the body into a porter, wearing it out. If we recall that the accumulation of fats and nutrients like sugar, chloresterol, is the cause of various illnesses, we shall understand the virtue of practising frugality in food and avoiding wastefulness.

Yes, the universal wisdom of the universe turns on economy and lack of waste. Yes, just as there is no wastefulness in anything in the universe and an eternal justice places on all creatures their members with the finest balance, and makes all of them —from the microbe to the rhinoceros, and the fly to the simurgh bird, and from a flowering plant to the flower of the spring, which opens thousands of millions of flowers in the spring— with a beauty of art and balance with no waste within a right proportion, equilibrium, order and beauty.

The fact that follows the lightest way, the shortest path, the easiest fashion, the most beneficial form shows that there is no wastefulness, futility, and absence of benefits in the nature of things. O prodigal, wasteful man! Know that by not adopting frugality, the most basic principle in the universe, you act in a way entirely contrary to reality! We must stop wastefulness, keep balance in everything, disallowing selfishness.