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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

July 29th, 2007 · 5 Comments

Hopefully you’ve been told about the 3 R’s since preschool. I know I was. We’ve all heard it, and we all understand it. Let’s follow the code of the 3 R’s for a better Earth.

Reduce

Think, before you purchase products. Do you really need it? We need to drastically reduce demand, so that we can drastically reduce supply. It makes plenty of sense. Do not be wasteful. A couple of examples; do not replace your cell phone every time a new one comes out, and do not buy a new TV because it is three inches bigger than the one you have presently. When it comes down to it, if it ain’t broke, don’t replace it, unless we are talking about energy draining appliances and other products being replaced with energy saving ones.

Reuse

I suppose a great way to assure what you no longer need is reused, would be to hold a yard sale. Even better, a FREE yard sale. You do not need it, and you do not want these products wasted, everyone loves free. Yard sales and flea markets are a great way of keeping waste out of our landfills. That horrible piece of art work that you despise but have not thrown out will do much better on the wall of someone who enjoys it, than it would rotting in a dump. Almost everything is reusable. Everything should be used, until it becomes unusable. Reusing is really just another way of reducing. Compost is another powerful form of reusing. Whether you are composting it in your own outdoor bin, or you contribute to your communities compost pile, this is reusing.

Recycle

I do not have any idea of the official numbers, but i am certain the majority of what ends up in the garbage is recyclable (even used diapers can be recycled). The two people within my home(the lady and I) only put out half of a small bag of garbage per week. Most of it is fully recyclable. It just needs to be separated and bagged. Much of the rest should be compost. There is no need for even a tiny amount of recyclable product to be thrown in the garbage. Plastic for example requires oil which had to be extracted from our planet and shipped to wherever. By recycling that very plastic, we take away the extraction process, the use of that oil, and the pollution caused by the shipping of that oil. We have at this point in time extracted enough of everything from our planet to sustain humanity. Now we just need to use what we extracted over, and over, and over.

Tags: Earth Friendly Choices

5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Saman Sadeghi // Jul 31, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    Great tips! We just started recycling and I am shocked at how little we are throwing away now!

  • 2 Speedy Links, August 2, 2007 | Samanathon.com // Aug 2, 2007 at 6:47 am

    […] Christopher has some great tips in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle […]

  • 3 Kat // Oct 7, 2007 at 3:25 am

    ok, so i live in an apartment. they have a “garbage” and a “recycling.” so everything recyclable goes in together. therefore, everything (well, we could probably be a little more dilligent) recyclable from my household goes in one bin, too. does that work? and if not, i wouldn’t mind bringing it up with the management. what recyclables can be put together/gets picked up together, like glass and cans, maybe? how many different bins do you have? i live on the bottom floor, with a little patio and patch of (dead) grass. it’d be pretty funny to start a compost pile. having said that, however, about how far from social outdoor areas should a compost pile be, due to stench?

  • 4 admin // Oct 12, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    Basically u separate paper from the rest. I have a couple of old lobster crates in my kitchen. The one with the toaster oven on it is full of plastics and metals, and the one with the microwave on it is full of paper and cardboard. I keep my bottles and cans and get my deposit back. I think people who don’t save bottles and cans are crazy.

    As far as compost goes, it does not stink that badly when it’s outside. Your patch of dead grass might just spring to life if you toss some rotten veg on it. :)

  • 5 Kat // Oct 17, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    thanks for the response! just to clarify (again), though.. so i can put all my paper stuff in a large plastic (?) garbage bag and throw it in the all-purpose “recycle” by the dumpster, and put all my metal and plastic in plastic garbage bags and do the same, and put glass bottles & cans in a bag to get a deposit? do the bottles and cans have to all be rinsed out? how much do they go for, typically? so glad i found you as a resource. so much yet to learn…

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