A lot of us were likely taught as a child about the idea of reducing, reusing, and recycling in order to help better protect the environment. However, not everyone necessarily knows the best ways to put these into practice in adulthood, especially when it comes to trying to balance this with all the other work you need to do in a given day. Here’s a quick run-through of what separates each of these practices.
The Difference Between Them
Reuse: Reusing is basically finding new uses for older items so they are no longer waste. This can mean either making an item last longer or repurposing it for something else.
Reduce: Reducing is cutting down on the amount of items that you dispose of either through better practices to reduce waste or just cutting down on what you buy.
Recycle: Recycling is sending certain disposable items through recycling programs to be broken down to their base materials and then reused in another way. Generally, you need additional help for this.
Examples And Our Services
So, how do each of these work out in practice? Let’s say that you had some old papers that were left lying around. Reusing them could involve holding onto them to either clean things up or using them in another way, like pet care. Reducing them could be looking at the reason why you have those papers in the first place, and trying to cut down, like using a paperless billing system or signing off of mailing lists you don’t need. Recycling them would be putting these in a separate place and sending them to a recycling center.
Ready to put these practices in action? Sunrise Sanitation is a local company that provides waste management and recycling services to West Virginia and Maryland. Please visit our website to learn more about what we have to offer.
