Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Beth Ricci of Red and Honey, while I take a little break from writing and publishing.
The Dutiful Recycler
My scrunchied-hair, neon-wearing self sat in the elementary-school classroom on a sunny afternoon in the early 90’s.
We watched a cartoon video that taught us all about things like recycling and picking up garbage to care for the environment.
The chant is firmly etched in my mind: “Reduce, Re-Use, and REEEE-cycle!” (heavy emphasis on the “recycle”!).
This value of eco-consciousness successfully stuck with me over the years, and as an adult I now dutifully recycle my glass, cardboard, and plastic in the weekly curbside pick-up.
I realized recently that unfortunately I had sort of missed the point.
The three-word mantra of eco-consciousness that children are taught from the tender early years is more than just a reminder to recycle. We are also instructed to reduce and re-use. In fact, the very order of the three words is intentional.
There is a reason that “reduce” comes first: because it is the number one priority!
The words are listed in order of efficiency and importance in caring for the environment. We cannot become good stewards of the earth if we continually perpetuate the consumer cycle by consuming mindlessly, and then throwing away or recycling large amounts of waste.
If we only ever recycle, and fail to place an emphasis on reducing our consumption, and re-using whatever we can before recycling it, then we have missed the point. We are just feeding the cycle of consumerism!
Photo by epsos.de
Getting Our Eco-Priorities Straight
“Reduce” is the first word.
We are called to reduce the amount of stuff we consume altogether. Practically speaking, this might look like:
- choosing to buy things that aren’t over-packaged
- only having stuff in your home that is intentional (things that are “useful or beautiful”)
- giving gifts that are consumable or experiential, like edible treats, itunes gift cards, etc.
- having a smaller, versatile wardrobe of classic mix & match items
- reducing your energy usage: turn lights off, use a clothesline instead of a dryer, etc.
- reduce waste by making sure to use up leftovers in the fridge and eating fresh things before they go bad (I’m not the only one that’s thrown out a whole head of rotting lettuce because she’s forgotten about it in the crisper, am I?)
- choose quality (when it matters) in order to avoid adding to landfills with cheap broken junk.
“Re-use” is the second word.
If you no longer find an item useful, your challenge is to turn it into something else that you can use! This might look like:
- re-purposing clothing (see this recent post here on SH for some great ideas!)
- using washed out food containers again and again (I culture my homemade yogurt in glass spaghetti sauce and pickle jars)
Photo by evelyngiggles
- turning worn-out clothes into rags for cleaning
- saving gift bags, tissue paper, and bows to use again
- reusable grocery bags instead of plastic
- using egg shells or egg cartons to start seeds for your garden
- buy second-hand when you can
- cloth diapers, mama cloth
- it can even be as simple as sharing a tea bag when sharing a cup of tea with someone. The little things all add up!
The final (and perhaps easiest?) word in our eco-conscious mantra is “recycle.”
I’m going to go ahead and throw “compost” in there too, because it is more or less the same thing: food waste gets “recycled” into rich, healthy earth that is great for your garden! If you can’t avoid buying it and you can’t reuse it, then you should try to recycle or compost it.
Things that you can recycle or compost include:
- aluminum cans
- glass
- cardboard & paper
- styrofoam
- electronics
- old cell phones
- soda can tabs
- plastic containers
- newspapers & magazines
- grass clippings and leaves
- food waste, wet napkins, kleenex, etc.
You can find out what is picked up at the curb, and what you can take to a depot. In my city garbage is only picked up bi-weekly, and recycling and compost are picked up weekly. You can also check out Simple Homemade’s super-helpful Q&A series on composting.
If we embrace the challenge of the Three R’s as it is given, we will leave a healthier and happier planet for our children. First reduce, then re-use, and as a last option – recycle!
How do you incorporate the Three R’s in your life?
Thanks for making me think! Recycling certainly is the easiest of the 3 R’s, but we definitely need to work toward reducing and reusing at our house. Having one child has seemed to increase our consumption by a factor of 10 or so! We try to reuse friends’ clothing and not buy many toys, but there’s just so much “stuff” out there and so many loving family members who want it ALL in our house. We’re working toward pre-loved gifts, as well as sharing what we have with others.
Great article. Just wanted to mention my little part in this concept. I love to paint furniture and rescue ugly but sturdy wood furniture to be redone and loved again in a new way. The chalk style paints I use are green and totally change the look.
So many buy accent and smaller furniture from the typical big box stores and I bet in a matter of a few years, they’ve fallen apart because they’re made of inferior products and quality. Makes me sad to know they’ll be set out for garbage day.
Most of the items I find are solid wood and will last decades if not longer. Add some beautiful green paint and you have a whole new look and you’re re-using furniture that otherwise was just sitting around and sometimes even by the curb because no one saw the potential.
Check out Norma’s Kentiques on fb for ideas and what is available.
Oops, forgot to include fb link.
What a great, comprehensive post! I can’t say that I’m as good as I’d like to be on any of the three, but I agree that maybe the most effort should be put into reducing in the first place. I definitely repurpose as much as I can (there’s not an egg carton that leaves our house until it’s been painted by my toddler), but I’d love to learn to live with more waste overall.
Lovely post, so well said. I use reuseable bags when I go to the grocery store but I realized that it is also important to consider the packaging of what I am putting in the bags.
Yay! I totally agree! A huge part of “living green” is simply buying less stuff – REDUCING. Less fossil fuels are used to ship less stuff to us, less poisonous chemicals are used when we don’t buy as much, less stuff (packaging and broken) is thrown away when we simply don’t buy what we don’t need. Buying less is a very simple way to have a lighter impact on the earth. LOVE this post!
Your post reminded me of the first time I took the weekly recycle pickup to the curb on pickup day, and felt ‘bad’ that I hardly had anything in it
. It took a few moments to realize it was because I have been reducing and reusing after noticing a couple of items in the neighbors’ recycle bin 
.
Now I feel good if I can skip a week in the recycle pickup because there isn’t much in there
I would like to see more post like this:)
These are wonderful reminders. I just realized that we have started to do a good job of washing out empty jars, but I am HORRIBLE about actually using them to store new items. It’s such habit to reach for my plastics that I totally ignore the growing pile of glass containers.
I’ve also found that I get excited about buying new products to “reduce my waste” when I probably could look around the house and re-use something I already have. Examples:
I bought new reusable grocery bags because mine are getting ratty, while I have a PILE of paper bags from previous trips to the store.
I bought new bins to store things in the garage while at the same time breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling.
I love Bernadette’s comment about having an empty recycle bin!
Great post! I completely agree, and wrote a post for earth day about the importance of doing it in that order as well.
Nice to be here and see your post!