The Three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

"We must make 'disposable' an obscene word." - David Suzuki

Recycling constitutes the first step that most people take on the road to sustainability. Although recycling offers a partial solution to trash disposal problems, its impact is overrated, as we shall see. The triple imperative "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" has become a significant mantra for our times, or at least a common bumper sticker. The usual order of the "Three R's" makes sense more than just alliteratively. The most important step involves reducing what we buy in the first place. Finding a reuse for items we no longer need is a second step, and only as a third choice should we take it to the former town dump for "recycling".

Reduce

Reducing is not just a question of buying less, but also of using less. One of my favorite examples, or pet peeves, is the use of paper towels in restrooms. How many paper towels does it take to dry two hands? Some people crank away until the paper almost hits the floor, then take one quick swipe and stuff it all, mostly still dry, into the trash bin. I like to see how little I can use; one sheet is plenty, or the handkerchief in my pocket will do, or my pants, or leaving them wet. If I were truly a radical activist I would get stickers made that say "I Like Live Trees Better Than Dead Ones" and put them on every paper towel dispenser I see.

Reducing purchase of many other things is covered in the Food chapter, the Energy chapter, and the Housing chapter. Little needs to be said here about reducing purchases of "toys" like the latest electronic devices, jet-skis or bigger boats, SUVs, treadmills, and all the other products of our consumer society that advertising, envy, and greed drive us to want.

Reuse

Our societal decision to be a throwaway culture has caused the demise of most of the "repair shops" that used to be home or local businesses. It is difficult to find people who will repair lawn mowers, power tools, shoes, clothing, electronic equipment, vacuum cleaners, etc. Large appliance repair is so expensive that broken ones usually go to the dump. I have just discovered a major counteractive effort. Fix-ya.com contains information on how to repair computer stuff, electronics, optics, appliances, and more. The site claims to store half a million user manuals. It also supplies advice from experts for your specific problem, and lists repair services by proximity to your zip code. This is a must site to check before throwing something away because it doesn't work. Hopefully, as sustainability becomes a dominant goal, equipment will be designed to be both durable and repairable, local repair shops will rise again, and "repair" will be another R for the list.

The third aspect of "reuse" involves giving an item to someone else once you are done using it personally. Children's clothing is a good example as it is passed on to younger siblings, to children across the street, or to swap shops and thrift shops. Organizations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries maintain clothing drop-off boxes in shopping centers. (Drop-off boxes from Planet Aid should be avoided. In my part of the world a newspaper article has questioned PlanetAid and its related organizations. See the Rick Ross Tvind page and Tvind Alert for much, much more. Organizations are not always what they claim to be.) Many churches run consignment thrift shops for clothing. Books are another area where reuse is still common. Used bookstores, libraries, and yard sales are only some of the ways to pass on books to others. In my area, sales of used ski equipment happen every autumn. Other kinds of equipment, including furniture, appliances, and outdoor recreation gear, are more difficult to find new homes for.

Perhaps your community has a "Swap Shop" or "Dump Store" where items are available free to anyone who will give them a new home. In my former town of Durham NH the swap shop at the transfer station has its own building, which is open on the two days a week the transfer station is open, and has a large volunteer staff. The staff is responsible for organizing stuff in the building and for deciding what is reusable and what needs to be recycled or trashed. This swap shop has become a social center, much like the town dumps of old. On Saturday morning it is normal for some items to be claimed the minute they are dropped off.

The advent of personal computers has generated new ways to get stuff reused. EBay is at least partly replacing local auctions (for better or worse I don't know), though I personally have never used it. Freecycle is another way; it involves a local e-mail list on which people offer things for swapping or giveaway.

Recycle

The troubling thing about recycling is that many, many people feel that it is all they need to do, that as long as they recycle they are off the hook, that they have done their share of taking care of Earth. As ECOSHIFT shows, this is far from true. Recycling is only a first baby step in the direction humanity needs to go.

Nevertheless, if the concept of recycling turns you on and you want to learn more about it and encourage it, your community probably has a recycling committee, which may have the job of finding markets for materials, of planning and overseeing recycling facilities, and of encouraging the citizenry to do what is right by publicizing information. Probably all you have to do is volunteer and you'll be on the committee!

True recycling means that a discarded item is remanufactured into what it was originally, e.g. bottles into bottles, cans into cans, paper into paper, and cardboard into cardboard. Glass, steel, and aluminum can recycle perpetually; paper fibers can go around about five times before they become too short and must be filtered from the pulp.

On the other hand, many materials, especially plastics and rubber, are not truly recycled. The new word "downcycling" describes turning something discarded into something else and differentiates it from true recycling. Using discarded ground-up tires as a playground surface is downcycling. Plastics labelled #1 and #2 can be downcycled into deck boards and fleece. All other types of plastic are rarely reusable. Only a small amount of #5 is downcycled by Stonyfield Farms and Recycline toothbrushes. Plastic #3 (PVC) is toxic "poison plastic" and should not be purchased in the first place. So aside from #1 and #2, there is essentially no domestic market. Most of the billions of plastic bags supposedly "recycled" every year are shipped to Asia and burned for energy, releasing lots of toxic materials into the atmosphere! This is a fine example of the United States exporting its pollutants to other countries with less strict environmental laws. Plastic bags are such a trash issue that cities and countries like Paris, San Francisco, South Africa, and Taiwan have already banned plastic shopping bags.

I'm looking forward to the day that manufacturers are required to take back old or broken items, like irons, toasters, refrigerators, and water heaters, and recycle them into new irons, toasters, refrigerators, and water heaters. Surely this would entice them to make such products much more durable and much more repairable! A few forward-looking companies are doing this already. Interface carpets are designed to be returned to the manufacturer and remade into new carpets. Marathon water heaters are touted as "the most durable water heater made". We all need to support such efforts as much as we can.

"Closing the loop" is necessary if recycling is going to work. This is the second half of the recycling process; we need to purchase recycled products so that manufacturers will be encouraged to make them. There is good commentary on this with regard to paper products at the TreeCycle web site. A number of web sites such as The Green Office offer recycled, environmentally friendly, and sustainable business products, school supplies, food supplies, and paper. Lack of demand has caused some paper manufacturers to stop making recycled paper products. Without demand, municipalities cannot sell the material that is intended to be recycled; this may happen more often than you think in your municipality. The market for recycled material has been severely impacted by the financial woes of late 2008. It certainly is too bad when people separate material for recycling that ends back up in the landfill because there is no demand for it.

Products that claim to be recycled, recyclable, or Earth-friendly might really be that -- or the claims may be meaningless "greenwash". It is often difficult to tell the difference. Many businesses are climbing on a perceived green bandwagon with stuff that isn't as green as it ought to be, or is unnecessary junk. Even so, one could argue that buying anything that's labeled with a green term sends a message that there is a demand for green products and this is a good thing. Increasing amounts of greenwash suggests that we are moving in the right direction. After everything is claimed to be green we can worry about whether it really is. On the other hand, if you really want to do things right, do the research needed (this may just mean reading the box carefully) to be sure that the item is what it claims to be.

"Many of the paper towels, toilet paper, and tissues which are labeled recycled contain only a minimal amount of post-consumer waste - typically only 10%. Even those which claim to be "100% recycled" usually contain only a small fraction of post-consumer material, with the remainder being manufacturing wastes. Just because the label says it's recycled or implies that it's Earth friendly doesn't mean much, despite the pretty green label. As consumers, we often have little protection from misleading claims - read the fine print, and know what you're buying. And remember that our goal should be to use products with as much post-consumer waste as possible." - from the Treecycle web site.

Two other aspects of recycling are worth mentioning. Many companies are finding that "precycling", a term for waste prevention, can reduce the costs of manufacturing a product. Re-using chemicals such as solvents instead of paying high disposal costs, ensuring that raw materials are used efficiently, recycling water, and burning waste appropriately to produce heat and electricity all can be economically more viable than older linear manufacturing with its huge waste production based on cheap energy and materials costs.

Finally, Paul Hawken argues for biological decomposition of waste and trash. He points out that "A package that turns into dirt is infinitely more useful, biologically speaking, than a package that turns into a plastic park bench. Heretical as it sounds, designing for decomposition, not recycling, is the way of the world around us" ["A Declaration of Sustainability", Utne Reader, Sept/Oct 1993].