/ 6 November 2009

Reduce, reuse, recycle

For those who care about the planet, there are various ways of reducing your carbon footprint; some that require a little effort and others that demand more commitment and purpose.

Stand in a school car park each morning and you will witness parents dropping off their children for the day.

Some parents live only a block away from one another. Parents living within two or three blocks could easily share a school run.

Not only is this environmentally responsible, it also gives busy parents extra time on two or three mornings each week, yet most people stubbornly neglect to try it.

Leaving the car at home can be a great idea and even better if you can share a lift to work with a friend on rotation. Public transport is another option — you might as well be one of the passengers on the bus rather than the guy in the traffic jam behind it.

With so much waste being generated, we need to manage it so it doesn’t harm the environment or our own health. We do and always will produce waste and that won’t change.

Unfortunately, in the past not enough thought was given to the impact waste has on our environment. But that is changing worldwide.

In areas where there has always been good service delivery there hasn’t been much concern beyond putting rubbish in the bin and having it collected by the municipal waste management companies.

We become conscious of the amount of waste we produce only when it’s not collected. Disposing of waste in a landfill site involves burying it and this remains a common practice in most countries.

Landfill sites were often established in abandoned or unused areas. A proper and well-managed landfill site can be a hygienic and relatively inexpensive method of disposing of waste.

A common by-product of landfill sites is gas, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, which is produced as organic waste breaks down. This can create odour problems or even kill surface vegetation.

This gas could be used to generate electricity. It can be pumped out of the landfill using pipes and flared off or burned in a gas engine to generate electricity.

Methods of reducing waste build-up include reusing second-hand products, repairing broken items instead of buying new ones, designing products to be refillable or reusable (such as cotton instead of plastic shopping bags), encouraging consumers to avoid using disposable products (such as disposable cutlery), removing any food or liquid remains from cans and packaging and designing products that use less material to achieve the same purpose (for example the weight of a beverage can).

Practical steps
So, how can we reduce the amount of waste we produce?

We can reuse and recycle our waste, but the first step should be to reduce the amount and toxicity of waste that is produced in the first place.

Practise the three Rs
recommended by the Fairest Cape Association and the city’s cleaner production initiatives — reduce, reuse and recycle.

Reduce

  • Buy only what you need and avoid buying excessively packaged products;
  • Buy in bulk and buy refills or concentrates;
  • Buy products that offer packaging made of recycled materials, such as kitchen towels and shampoo bottles with recycled plastic content. Try to avoid disposable products, such as cameras and paper plates.

Reuse
Where you no longer have use for something, find somebody who does. Schools, charities and libraries accept unwanted clothes, furniture, toys and books.

Repair items rather than throwing them away by making use of, for example, your local shoemaker and bike repair shop for spares.

Recycle

  • Recycle waste that cannot be repaired or reused by dropping it off at your nearest recycling depot;
  • Use your vegetable waste to make compost;
  • Use packaging that has a recycled symbol printed on it.