Mumbai University > First Year Engineering > Sem 1 > Environmental Studies

Marks: 5M

Year: May 2016

There is a common mantra that many of us where taught as children but do not always think of on a daily basis. The mantra is reduce, reuse, recycle, otherwise known as the three Rs. Over the last half century, the amount of waste created per person in the United States has almost doubled. The concept and promotion of the three Rs was created to help combat the drastic increase in solid waste production.

Reduce

Let's start with the first R, which is reduce. The three Rs are really a waste management hierarchy with reduce being the most important strategy. In order to reduce the amount of waste produced, it is essential to focus on the source of the waste, or where the waste is originally coming from. Source reduction is when products are designed, manufactured, packaged, and used in a way that limits the amount or toxicity of waste created.

Reuse

The second most important strategy of the three Rs is to reuse, which is when an item is cleaned and the materials are used again. This concept can be difficult because we currently live in a world with many disposable items and it takes some imagination and creativity to see how items can be reused. There are two main ways that the concept of reusing can be applied to reduce waste. First, when purchasing a new item, you can look for a product that can be used repeatedly instead of a version that is only used once and thrown away. The second way to reuse is to buy an item secondhand, borrow, or rent an item, instead of buying the product new.

Recycling

is a process to convert waste materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to plastic production. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" waste hierarchy.

Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastic, textiles and electronics. The composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste—such as food or garden waste—is also considered recycling. Materials to be recycled are brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned and reprocessed into new materials destined for manufacturing.