I believe that when greenies say "reduce, reuse, recycle", all people actually hear is the "recycle" bit.The order of those three things matters -
- First, reduce, then
- reuse - then, and only then
- recycle
Recycle is the last-ditch option (not counting the unthinkable - landfill). Recycle is not the first option.
If you're recycling more than your neighbours, don't feel smug. Ask yourself "Is there any way I could reduce the amount of stuff coming into my household in the first place, so I'd have less stuff to recycle? And is there any way I can reuse any of this stuff rather than recycling it?"
We all know we're supposed to "slim our bins", and send less stuff to landfill. The next step is to persuade people to slim their recycling, by putting reduction and reuse first.
9 comments:
I think you're missing an R too.. one a lot of people forget about.. Repair..
We put another "R" in, too. Our first "R" is "refuse".
If we don't really need it, we refuse it. If it's overpackaged, we either refuse it or refuse the packaging. And if we need it, but it's overly exploitative of others, then we refuse it.
The more people refuse the consumer path, the more effective the following steps of reduce, reuse, recycle will be.
You are so right on the recycle being what most people hear! We've also added repair and refuse lol.
To stonehead:
Refuse is a good 'un.. refuse to be caught in the consumer trap.. refuse to upgrade just because *they* say you should..
Oh good.. my id is back on my username.. I won't have to rely on just my ego amy more.. :-)
hmmm.. who is Amy More?.. or perhaps I meant "any more".. that seems more likely..
I too think the last R should be considered the last resort. I have a hard time explaining that to people sometimes though - like when I refuse something because of the packaging and they say, "well, you can recycle it." I guess I have been using "refuse and repair" too but never actually thought to add them to the R's. But I will now, in fact, I think it should be put on a t-shirt. : )
Great post and I love the Repair and Refuse additions. The demon inside me often thinks that if our local council chose not to collect packaging as part of its refuse collection, consumer pressure would then become powerful with more and more people refusing overpackaged goods.
bout a year ago Kansas City got in a heap of trouble cuz the local news discovered that even though people were willing to PAY EXTRA to recycle ( what incentive huh) the trash company was taking the recycables to the landfill with the rest of the "garbage" anyways. Reusing things is so easy. All this plastic we use could be used a million diffrent ways rather then just put in the recycling bin.
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