What happened to the first 2 R’s ?

Ever notice that although there are 3 R’s, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, communities have focused only on the last one. Communities have put effort into providing a recycling service and rightly so, as it decreases the material entering the landfill. The first 2 R’S, Reduce and Reuse have the potential to have even a greater reduction of waste than recycling. Recycling is not necessarily the best R to emphasize, because even if 100% of materials were recyclable, there would still be waste associated with collection, separation, transport, and processing of materials, to produce the marketable product. These are all avoided by reducing and reusing.

One reuse effort that has slowly become prominent is the switch from disposable plastic bags to material reusable ones. Different methods of promoting the use of reusable bags are being used by communities. They include; charging consumers for plastic bags, giving a discount to consumers that bring bags and creating regulations to ban plastic bags all together.

Communities need to look at the over all picture of consumption and disposal instead of starting their plan from what arrives at the curb. It’s beneficial for a community to decrease the amount of material placed at the curb, whether recycling or garbage, because approximately 80% of all money spent on waste management is on collection. Reducing and reusing would have a considerable effect of the decrease of these costs. This is one of many benefits.

Reusing a product or package more than once or for another purpose extends the life of the material and therefore reduces the waste quantity requiring treatment and disposal. The environmental effects are also reduced because a replacement item is not produced.


Reduce Your Impact By Following the Three New R’s and One P

Rethink: consider why you use a particular material and then investigate if there are options for not using it (why use paper towels - when you can use a cloth, why use plastic bags - when you can use cloth bags).

Refuse: once you have rethought materials and identified alternatives stick to not buying the original product that you’re replacing.

Reduce: minimize the amount of waste you create directly by purchasing only what you need, sharing items, and using products with less packaging.

Pre-cycle: choosing products that lend themselves readily to recycling or are made of recycled material, especially post consumer recycled material


Some information used is from the Waste Management class at St. Lawrence College, Cornwall Campus, Environmental Technician Program, 2007-2008