The 5 Rs: REFUSE, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, and ROT and the bonus RETHINK!

Written By Frances McChesney

You may have heard about the 3 Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - to deal with plastic and other waste.  Even better for ourselves and our planet is to take on the 5 Rs.

  • The first one is to refuse  (in a nice way) the plastic bag, water bottle, straw, the styrofoam, all the excess plastic and instead bring your own. And, just buy less stuff.

  • Next on the list is to reduce our use of stuff.  I keep rethinking ways to reduce the amount of stuff I throw away.  It is rare for me to have anything other than glass or metal in my recycling bin and I find it very satisfying when I have nothing or next to nothing in my trash bin. The biggest bulk of my waste is in the green waste bin.  We are fortunate to have a very robust composting system in my community!  That’s the “Rot” part of the 5 Rs.

  • Next – what can I reuse or give to others to reuse.  There are so many ways now to donate clothing for reuse (which is so often now made with oil based materials, i.e., plastic) or to be made into new products.

  • Recycling your glass and metal is an excellent way to make a difference.  Recycling plastic not so much.  As we’ve discussed on our Recycling page, plastic recycling does not work due, in part, to the chemistry of plastic and the sheer enormous quantity of plastic waste. 

And maybe the most important R (#6) is to rethink your relationship to plastic- be creative-use less- trash less. 

Why does it make a difference to take on the 5 Rs and to refuse the plastic?  All the waste and trash we produce contributes to significant and non-reversible health and environmental problems – air pollution, water pollution, wildlife impacts, climate change, and more.  As a nation, Americans generate more waste than any other nation in the world, estimated by studies to be between at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg) to 7.1 pounds of municipal solid waste (MSW) per person per day, fifty five percent of which is contributed as residential garbage!  One garbage truck holds 10 to 20 metric tons of stuff we no longer want.  Every single minute one garbage truck worth of plastic waste ends up in the ocean.

Someone recently asked me why we think we have the right to dump all of our waste for someone else to deal with and where it impacts the planet?  Such an excellent question.  We can choose a better way.

What can you do?

  • Take on the 5 Rs and REFUSE as much as you can!

 


Frances McChesney
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