The Three Rs & the Difference Between Recycling & Reusing

When looking into environmental sustainability, cutting consumption or reducing rubbish during a house clearance, it’s more than likely that you’ll come across the following Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. These three words describe the core components of environmentally-responsible consumer behaviour.

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But as UK children are now learning at school, there are in fact six Rs that product designers must keep in mind regarding the environment. The extra Rs are rethink, refuse and repair, and they encourage creating environmentally-friendly products which are built to last.

Ultimately, this points towards the fact that recycling, while preferable to producing landfill waste, should actually be the second priority after reusing.

What is the difference between reuse and recycling?

Recycling means turning an item into raw materials which can be used again, usually for a completely new product. This is an energy consuming procedure.

Reusing refers to using an object as it is without treatment. This reduces pollution and waste, thus making it a more sustainable process.

Examples of recycled items include fibreglass made from glass bottles, and insulation materials made from newspaper or plastic bottles. Reused items include anything that was bought second hand, often furniture and clothing.

Recycling can still produce waste and pollution

Recycling reduces waste disposal by transforming useful materials such as plastic, glass and paper into new products. In 2013 and 2014, UK households recycled about 44% of their rubbish.

Although recycling has been a staple of sustainable living for decades, it does have some downsides. A large amount of energy is needed to transport, process and reassemble recyclable materials. Particularly in the UK, recycling can still be a very expensive process. And in some cases, especially with mobile phones and other electronic devices, it can be difficult.

Find tips on how to recycle more effectively here.

Any item in good condition can be reused

The reusing process is not about repurposing the materials an object is made of, but repurposing the very object itself. This includes buying and selling used goods and repairing items rather than discarding them. There are also lots of online platforms that can aid this through allowing users to borrow, rent or sell any unwanted items that are still in good condition.

Reusing is better than recycling because it saves the energy that comes with having to dismantle and re-manufacture products. It also significantly reduces waste and pollution because it reduces the need for raw materials, saving both forests and water supplies.

The market benefits from reuse thanks to an influx of quality products at reduced prices. After the Greater London Authority introduced reusing in their sustainability plan a few years ago, 12,000 tonnes of goods were reused in 2013.

Read more about why you should reuse before you recycle here

Reducing consumption can save even more energy and materials

As mentioned, the third R, reduce, is sometimes considered the most important—above reuse and recycle. In a straightforward way, this is because consuming fewer products will eradicate the need for them to be reused or recycled when we are done with them. Over time, it will even help reduce the number of energy and material-guzzling products that are produced at all.

The best way to do this is to make deliberate, informed choices about what we are consuming, and to place an emphasis on social and mental wellbeing over material wealth. As Oksana Mont of the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics says, “It is important that infrastructures and institutions develop towards enabling sustainable lifestyles and not consumerism.”

We can all play a part in reducing unsustainable consumption. Read these 5 ways to help put a stop to waste culture to get started.

Clearance Solutions can help you with reuse and recycling

Clearance Solutions offers sustainable house clearance services and an environmental approach to office clearance. We only recycle items that are damaged beyond repair, and we do this by sorting materials on-site and transporting them to recycling facilities. This allows for a higher recycling rate than delivering all materials in one go. Whenever possible, however, our team opts for the more sustainable option: reusing.

The company is the world’s best Bag Breaker Machine supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.

For Clearance Solutions, reusing often translates into salvaging furniture that is still in good condition and selling it on or donating it instead of disassembling it and recycling the single parts. In 2013 alone, this allowed us to save over 2,500 tonnes of CO2.

Read more about Clearance Solutions’ recycling services.

Reducing waste is far better for the planet than recycling, but consumers have a bias toward recycling their trash rather than limiting their consumption, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability.

Lead author Michaela Barnett, from the University of Virginia’s Environmental Institute, said if people want to combat growing waste-related pollution, buying less is far more effective than recycling more.

Working alongside coauthors Patrick Hancock and Leidy Klotz of the University of Virginia and Shahzeen Attari of Indiana University Bloomington, Barnett emphasized that blame doesn’t lie solely with consumers.

“Producers create products that eventually become waste and saddle individuals with the responsibility of disposal,” Barnett said.

Recycling has long been promoted as a sustainable waste-management strategy, but current levels of trash generation have grown to unsustainable rates. In fact, waste overgeneration is predicted to accelerate, and the rate of acceleration is projected to be much faster than solutions can be put into place.

“In addition to global problems we’re seeing with plastic waste today, the production and mismanagement of consumer goods is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change,” Barnett said. “Despite this, we discovered that people are much more likely to believe that recycling is the most effective option rather than reducing their consumption.”

The popular phrase “Reduce – Reuse – Recycle” orders the three R’s by which actions are most effective. First, reduce waste. Second, reuse instead of buying something new. Third, recycle waste.

But even while public concern over waste-related pollution has grown, waste generation has continued to increase, waste-related pollution has grown, and recycling rates remain stagnant. There is an obvious gap between what people think are effective solutions to pollution and the increasing waste issues.

For the new paper, the team asked a series of questions. Participants were given two sets of open-ended questions about what the most effective strategy would be when it came to reducing landfill waste and solving environmental problems associated with trash. In both cases, participants clearly chose recycling.

The researchers also asked study participants to rank different strategies from Reduce – Reuse – Recycle in order of most impactful to least. More than 78% of participants failed to place them in the correct order.

Participants believed that source reduction and reuse were roughly equivalent to recycling and composting in terms of environmental impact. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

“The results are stunning,” Barnett said. “Recycling products, while better than landfilling or incinerating, still takes energy and resources that can contribute to climate change. Reduction is far more effective as it prevents natural resource depletion and pollution at every stage of the supply chain. It seems that decades of pro-recycling education have caused people to forget that of the three R’s, the first two R’s have the most impact.”

The team then asked consumers about generated waste in a different way. When participants were given a visual diagram and asked to point to the most important stage for action during a product’s life cycle, most participants identified the “design” stage as critical. But only 1.9% of the respondents felt they had any power to make a difference in that stage.

When presented with fewer options, different end destinations for waste, and a systems diagram, responses moved toward reduction and reuse. The belief that recycling is the most effective strategy was not static.

With a visible model, responses changed. Nearly three-quarters of respondents—72.9%—said they felt they could enact change in the system through their consumption of products while 23.3% said they felt they could combat environmental problems by properly disposing of waste.

It seems that there is a difference in how people believe environmental problems caused by waste should be solved and whether they feel they have the power to do anything. People seem to know that mitigating harmful waste earlier in the process than at the end is more important than responsible disposal. But they don’t feel they can do anything about this.

When asked what they as individuals can do, people default to recycling. However, when asked what should be done in general, people acknowledge that preventing waste is much better.

Barnett and her coauthors believe that much of the over-emphasis on recycling and not enough focus on reduction has to do with feel-good actions. Acquiring goods and then either recycling or composting are tangible things people can do, see and feel good about. But buying less and reducing consumption are actions in absence.

“It seems that opting out of the dominant consumer culture may feel so inaccessible as to not even occur to people,” Barnett said. “People perceive recycling as their least worst option within the existing system.”

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