Four Rs
From Envirowiki
The "Four R's" are a guideline for sustainable living, applied to the sourcing of products.
A very important point about the Four R's is that they are in order of importance. Ideally, you can avoid the last three R's by abiding by the first, and so on.
Here they are:
Refuse - cut consumption, refuse things that you do not need. Every product is sourced from raw materials exploited from the natural environment, and takes energy to produce. Every product requires a mine and/or a forestry operation and/or a farm and energy for production and transport to you, most likely from fossil fuels. While the next three R's are needed to slow the rate of production, the most effective way is to just so "no".
Reduce - if you do need something, reduce the amount you take and the impact of it as much as possible. The best way is to make things yourself, or grow your own food. If you must buy something, choose the product with the least packaging, the product that has travelled the least distance to be with you, the product that is as recycled as possible, the product with the least embedded energy (for example, boycott aluminuim).
Reuse - don't chuck things out that you can use again. You avoid the wasted energy, space, and pollution of sending things to be recycled/landfilled/incinerated. You also avoid the need to obtain the thing again later on, using up more resources and energy.
Recycle - what many people regard as the most important R is actually the least. It comes after all the other Rs have been exhausted. If you have obtained a product out of neccessity, made the least impact choice available to you, and the product or its packaging cannot be reused and must be discarded, that's when you recycle. Recycling doesn't mean it's okay to purchase lots of unneccessary imported luxury goods as long as you put the box in the green and yellow bin.
