what is meant by "reduce,reuse,and recycle"?

Question

please help me

Answer 1

Reduce consumption (use less!)

Reuse things until they are completely worn-out

Recycle so old things can be made into new things

Answer 2

This goes back to at least the mid 1980's when the USEPA was promoting waste reduction and later pollution prevention. The concept of reducing use of a material is that if people used less then industry would produce less and there would be an overall reduction in energy use and waste generation. Now, having reduced your use of material to some minimal level, you want to reuse the material. Something that is durable and doesn't wear out produces less waste because you don't replace it as often. Now after reducing and reusing, you can look at recycling to cut down on waste generation. Recycling is less desirable than reuse because recycling requires energy, such as collecting and remelting aluminum cans. And finally, what you can't reduce, reuse, or recycle, you have to treat for proper and safe disposal. Treatment was thrown out of the hierarcy for political reasons but some form of safe disposal will always be required.

Answer 3

Disagree with the above poster.

"Reduce, reuse, recycle" has been the environmentalists mantra since before anyone even considered carbon to be a pollutant. Probably even before the global cooling scare of the 70's. It has nothing to do with your carbon-footprint. It was a simple suggestion to be mindful of the resources you are using (which I agree with), without the guise of worldwide destruction to scare people, or tax people, into following it (which I vehemently disagree with).

While reducing your consumption (voluntarily of course, not by force of government mandate) is a good goal, and reusing what you can (beyond that which you find doable) is noble, recycling is trickier. I agree with recycling aluminum, solely due to the large amount of power required to reduce bauxite, or aluminum oxide. Recycling plastics however may just release more VOCs than creating new plastics and throwing old ones away in the first place.

Answer 4

Agree with the previous poster.

The whole objective is to minimize our carbon footprint. We minimize greenhouse gases by lowering our consumption of manufactured goods. By reusing, we are buying less frequently, and by recycling, we are re-using resources (this is not always environmentally clean, however, but is a lesser devil to choose in the carbon footprint game). The implicit assumption here is that capitalism will force production patterns to match demand throughout the technology chain, starting with you as the consumer, all the way to generating stations.

Answer 5

that was decided during the council of trent. many cardinals and bishops argued over this, it was a month long symposium. The countryside was sorely taxed, taking care of the personal needs of these great men. Several were executed in the process but in the end, nodding came to mean "yes" and the side to side motion came to mean "no". The extent of conviction was indicated by the vigorousness of the movement. If someone asked you if you wanted cream in your coffee, and you did, you were supposed to bob your head up and down rapidly, even VIOLENTLY at least eight times.