The Three ‘Rs’ of Sustainable Living – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The changes I’m making to my lifestyle in an attempt to be more sustainable, revolve around the principles of the three ‘Rs’: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  These three principles do not encompass everything about sustainable living but they are a really good place to start. So when I post about things I have been doing, I will refer back to these principles.

Reduce

This is by far the most important of the three, but unfortunately it is the one that is emphasised the least.  Disappointingly, most websites that talk about the concepts of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, limit their discussion of the ‘Reduce’ ideas to shopping for products with less packaging, with no mention of the importance of actually shopping less.

Our activity as humans is having multiple detrimental impacts on our planet.  These negative impacts are primarily due to our excessive consumption, particularly in the developed countries.  Changing to renewable energy sources and recycling everything, will not avert catastrophe if we don’t also reduce our consumption.

Therefore the most important behavioural change that we can make is to reduce our consumption. In essence, to ‘reduce’ simply means to buy less stuff.  It doesn’t just mean shopping for ‘green’ products or shopping closer to home, it means shopping less.  It doesn’t just mean buying products with less packaging, it means buying less products.  It means not buying things you don’t need.  It means being satisfied with the important things in life and doing without unnecessary luxuries.  In short, it is the rejection of consumerism.

The following quote from the Simplicity Collective website captures the essence of this:

“Voluntary simplicity, or simple living, is a way of life that rejects the high-consumption, materialistic lifestyles of consumer cultures and affirms what is often just called ‘the simple life’ or ‘downshifting.’ The rejection of consumerism arises from the recognition that ordinary Western-style consumption habits are degrading the planet; that lives of high consumption are unethical in a world of great human need; and that the meaning of life does not and cannot consist in the consumption or accumulation of material things. Extravagance and acquisitiveness are accordingly considered an unfortunate waste of life, certainly not deserving of the social status and admiration they seem to attract today. The affirmation of simplicity arises from the recognition that very little is needed to live well – that abundance is a state of mind, not a quantity of consumer products or attainable through them.”

Unfortunately in the west we are pressured on all sides by advertising, governments and society in general to do exactly the opposite.  As Victor Lebow said in the Journal of Retailing (1955),:

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption… These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace.”

So ‘reducing’ requires a complete change in attitude and a lot of will power to resist the marketing pressures that surround us and the conditioning that we have been subjected to from birth.  I have made some real progress in this area but it is an ongoing challenge…

The Story of Stuff and the Buy Nothing New Month websites discuss these ideas further and have some great tips.

Reuse

“Reuse is about extracting the highest value possible from used items – preserving and even enhancing the integrity of materials through imagination, creativity and intelligence.” – the Reuse Alliance

This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function, and new-life reuse where it is used for a different function.

Reuse prolongs the life of a resource, saves the energy and materials needed to produce brand new materials, prevents otherwise useful resources going to waste/landfill, creates less air and water pollution than if it were recycled or discarded, and reduces money spent on new items and disposal costs.

Australia has one of the largest rates of waste generation per person in the world, being second only to the USA, and this increased by 5.4% per year between 1996 and 2007. Reusing products instead of throwing them away can significantly reduce CO₂ emissions as well as having other environmental benefits such as reducing landfill.

Reuse involves the following strategies:

• Repairing – Repair things yourself or have them repaired to extend the life of an existing item rather than throwing it away the moment it breaks down.
• Renting or borrowing instead of buying.
• Reselling or donating goods when you have finished with them.
• Regifting – give an unwanted gift to someone else
• Refilling – water bottles, ink cartridges, coffee cups etc.
• Repurposing – find creative ways to reuse items instead of throwing them away
• Choosing durable products over disposables
• Buying used, refurbished, and surplus goods instead of new products whenever possible.

Before you throw anything in the bin, do a search online for possible alternatives for that item.  You will often be surprised at the ideas other people have come up with for reusing stuff.

Here is a website with some ideas to get you started.

Recycle

Recycling is the breaking down of a used item into raw materials which can then be used to make new items.  This is the ‘R’ that everyone is aware of because it is the one that is most actively promoted by governments and others.  However without implementing the other two strategies ‘reduce and reuse’, recycling won’t necessarily have any positive impact on the environment.  This is because recycling simply makes available new sources of material for producing even more goods for consumption.  For example, producing recycled paper doesn’t necessarily mean that fewer trees are chopped down – we can continue to harvest forests for new paper just as fast as we always did.  We have simply added recycled paper as a new resource to the system so the system can continue to expand even after we have reached the limits of new paper production.

In the words of Annie Leonard, author of The Story of Stuff:

“Recycling is what we do when we’re out of options to avoid, repair, or reuse the product first. Firstly: Reduce. Don’t buy what we don’t need. Repair: Fix stuff that still has life in it. Reuse: Share. Then, only when you’ve exhausted those options, recycle.”

Therefore, while recycling is very important, it will only be effective in conjunction with reducing and reusing and is the least important of the three Rs.