5Rs OF WASTE MANAGEMENT (Part 2)

 3. Reuse – Make Sure Things Last as Long as They Can

It simply means switching up disposable items for reusable and permanent alternatives. This means sourcing a reusable beverage container and carrying it with you when you are out and about. It means carrying reusable cutlery with you as a measure to avoid disposable cutlery.

Single use plastics such as cups, straws, gloves and now masks have generated a ‘throw away’, ‘one won’t hurt’ culture. The rate that we all consume plastic products is drastically becoming unimaginable, the plastic crisis has always been one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges. 

For almost every single-use item there is a reusable alternative. Here are some few examples:

•  Paper tissues – washable handkerchiefs
• Disposable razors – electric shaver or a straight-edge razor
• Paper towels – cotton cloths or microfibre
• Dish sponge – cotton cloth
• Tea bags – loose tea and a tea strainer
• Coffee pods – French press
• Baking parchment – grease or oil the pan or use a silicon mat
• Tin foil/cling film – use a food container or jar with a lid
• Paper bags/ plastic bags – bring your own cloth bag
• Bottled water – a glass or stainless steel water bottle and tap water

And the list goes on.     

Reusing and repairing go hand in hand. When you’re deciding whether to toss something and buy a new one, ask yourself if you can find a way to reuse or repair it. This applies to clothing, furniture, and technology. If your phone or laptop is broken, instead of immediately purchasing a new one, seek repair options first.

Reusing also means selling or donating your used items so they go to loving homes instead of the landfill. Have a jumble sale, stick it on sites like ebay or freecycle, you can even ask your friends and family if they have a need for things you don’t.

Another thing you can do is re-purpose or upcycle old things you don’t need into something cool and useful. This step doesn’t have to be expensive. Buy second hand, or make it yourself! Repair broken items. Repurpose old clothes, or household items and breathe new life into your wardrobe by participating in clothing swaps.

So how can we reuse waste? Here are some tips: 

- Give unwanted toys and books to hospitals or schools

- Put unwanted clothes in used clothing bins

- Use plastic containers for freezing or storing food items

- Save wrapping paper and boxes to use again

- Use old jars for storage

-Take old magazines to your local doctor's or dentist's surgery

-Shop at second hand stores or use online trading websites to buy items that are unwanted by others

- Take household items to your council’s resource recovery center

- Make memo pads out of waste paper

- Re-use envelopes - purchase reuse labels.  

4. Recycle – For Those Things You Can’t Refuse, Reduce, or Reuse

Recycling involves some form of reprocessing of waste materials to produce another product. For example, recycling plastic bottles to make buckets.

One of the easiest ways to reduce your waste is to recycle. After you have refused, reduced, and reused there shouldn’t be much left to recycle anyway. But with what there is, you should still make sure to separate your trash so that those resources can be reused instead of filling our landfills.

Many of us have been programmed to believe that recycling is the go-to solution for waste reduction. This is a misconception.

In reality this is still an expensive way to process the waste that can be reused. Glass jars and bottles could be kept and used in a zero waste store. Plastic can be upcycled to some extent but it never really goes away. It is better to refuse it.

Recycling infrastructure in its current state is quite limited and in many cases actually consists of “downcycling” – meaning that recyclable materials are made into low-quality, disposable goods that will ultimately end up in landfill.

Another problem is that recycling infrastructure cannot keep pace with the huge quantities of single-use disposables consumed and disposed of by humans at record speed.

Recyclable materials that are not successfully recycled into new products become landfilled, shipped to landfills in so called developing countries, or incinerated in Waste-to-Energy (WtE) programs.

It is also important to consider that the recycling process itself is highly energy intensive.

For these reasons recycling is treated by the Zero Waste movement as a last resort to be used only after steps 1 Refuse, 2 Reduce & 3 Reuse have been exhausted.

So what can be recycled? The main products that can be recycled are paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum, tin and plastic containers.

Composting and worm farms are methods of recycling organic waste.

Buy recycled. You can buy products that are made from recycled materials. This is called ‘Closing the Loop’.