The new and improved 3 R's

We are all familiar with the 3 R's. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This was the extent of my environmental education for many years. After many years of environmental learning, I came to my own realization that it is actually much more important to reduce and reuse and to resort to recycling as a last option. This is because the process of creating the products that we recycle has negative impacts on the environment, and eventually recycled products will not be renewable.

A pioneer in the world of going zero waste introduced a new approach to the 3 R's that I am choosing to implement in my own life. This expert is Bea Johnson. You can follow her on instagram @zerowastehome. She gave wonderful TedTalk a few years ago that discusses her own zero waste journey and her guiding principles, the 5 R's. Take a watch:

If 14 minutes is too long for you, I'll summarize real quick.

The 5 R's

1. Refuse: Don't accept things that you don't need. Don't sign up for junk mail, don't accept freebies, don't increase demand for things that are wasteful!

2. Reduce: take a look at what you have and declutter! We don't need new shirts every week. She proposed having a wardrobe that fits in a carry-on. Simplify your life and consume less. You don't need every new item out there.

3. Reuse: Eliminate single use products from your arsenal. Wooden scrubbies, rags, cloth bags, glass jars. There are so many simple switches we can make to reduce our waste. With clothing, buy secondhand! It's a great way to reuse and diminish demand.

4. Recycle: Anything that cannot be refused, reduced or reused should be recycled.

5. Rot the rest (compost): Anything organic can be composted. Food scraps and even hair(!) can be composted and returned naturally to the environment.

I love this update to the 3 R's. These are manageable principles to live by and so I hope to begin to implement these 5 R's into my habits. I can definitely think of my many things I can refuse, reduce, and reuse that I wasn't doing before. I also can see how making these changes in my life will lead to many positive impacts besides that of the environment. I will eat healthier, will spend less time cleaning, less time acquiring stuff, and more time on what matters most. Taking care of the Earth goes hand in hand with taking care of our bodies. Let's take care of each other and our Earth together!