Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - The Forgotten Two

The Reduce, Reuse, Recycle campaign hit its stride in the '90s in terms of public service announcements and laws requiring recycling. This should have occurred earlier, but better late than never. The general purpose of the campaign was a good one, but it focused on the wrong thing and as such gave the public misinformed ideas.

The campaign, rather than focusing on each "R", focused on one "R" -- recycling. If you're going to rank each "R" in terms of importance recycling would be last with reduce first and reusing second. The campaign focused on the wrong aspect of itself and is now, in many ways, paying the price for that. Recycling, while needed and vital, creates pollution due to the energy it requires to recycle items. Reducing and reusing produce no pollution. They actually decrease pollution output as when you reduce and reuse you negate the need to recycle and negate the need to produce more items. Reducing and reusing also keep recyclable items out of landfills, as recyclable items often get trashed either on accident or due to a lack of caring. According to the EPA recyclable paper makes up 40% of landfill contents (1). For all of the negatives, its understandable why the RRR campaign focused on recycling over reducing and reusing -- the public at large wants convenience and wants new things. Human nature and greed in many ways hurt the purpose of reducing and reusing. That said, had the campaign focused on those two as much as recycling a difference surely would have been made. Things have not totally changed however as even in recent years when there is more knowledge available that reducing and reusing are more important than recycling, we still see ill-conceived campaigns and slogans. An example is in Monroe County, New York. A slogan they use for their reduce, reuse, recycle campaign:

Slogans like this make the move into a greener society difficult. Although this isn't surprising coming from Monroe County NY, which is the least green and the most polluted NY state county, with Rochester being more polluted than any other upstate NY city. Regardless, the slogan here, and there are many more like it, kind of gives a hopeless feeling when trying to further greenify society. Its about time we focus on reducing and reusing. It simply more important.


Sincerely,