The cost of keeping small non-perishable items around is zero. The cost of re-buying them is nonzero. The environmental cost of sending perfectly functional i

The cost of keeping small non-perishable items around is zero. The cost of re-buying them is nonzero. The environmental cost of sending perfectly functional items to landfill and consuming energy to recreate them is definitely nonzero. (And the financial cost of disposal is also nonzero; it's just priced into your taxes.) You also seem to have forgotten that there was a pandemic. I expect 99% of passport-owners went a full year without using it because there was nowhere to go. Earlier this year there was a couple of weeks where you couldn't expedite a passport request for any amount of money due to the backlog created by people who'd allowed their passports to lapse during the pandemic all trying to renew at once. Which actually shows another problem with the "just buy it again, bro" plan: In addition to being wasteful, it's risky. There's no guarantee that you can just re-buy things, or do so expediently and for a reasonable price, or that you'll have the liquidity to do so. Shortages, buyouts, mass layoffs, inflation and price spikes are all things we've seen many examples of in the last few years.