Getting to know the 5 R’s of reducing waste

So, I was watching a TEDx Talk on YouTube by Bea Johnson. Bea Johnson is woman in the USA who lives a zero-waste lifestyle. Living zero waste isn’t something that I personally aspire to but I admire that she has made it work for her family. Her videos and blog Zero Waste Home are full of useful tips for reducing waste.

In this TEDx Talk Bea Johnson put up a slide about the 5 R’s of reducing waste. Being new to reducing waste, this was something totally new to me.

Here it is:

What I love about this is that Recyling and Rotting are right down the bottom of the 5 R System.

It really resonated with me because I am coming to realise that the idea of reducing waste is bigger than reducing waste that goes to landfill (although that is a start). 

It is also about reducing waste on a bigger level so that items can avoid the need to be donated, recycled, composted or sent to landfill.

Clothes for example. There is more involved in the donation of clothes to op-shops. A lot of those clothes end up in landfill anyway. This March 2017 Sydney Morning article quotes to CEO of the Salvos talking about this issue: 

“According to Salvos Stores CEO Neville Barrett, "Generally speaking donations are slightly up on previous years, by perhaps one or two per cent. The quality of donations, however, has reduced a lot."

He explains that damaged cotton garments can be sold for industrial rags, "suitable garments can be on-sold internationally" by third parties (although the revenue generated is minimal) but "if it's not good enough for either of those outcomes, unfortunately we must send it to the tip.

"Nationally, our annual waste collection and disposal bill is somewhere between $5millon and $6 million."

A charity has to spend up to $6million a year on disposing clothes not appropriate for donations. Think of what that money could otherwise be spent on.

There are 7 kinds of plastics that go into our recycling bins but at the moment, according to Clean UpAustralia, only 1, 2 and 3 are recycled in Australia (although they do say that increasingly councils are recycling 4 – 7).  

Even kerbside recycling of every day products still requires resources (even if it saves more). Wouldn’t it be great if we could even reduce the need to spend so much to be recycled?  

This 5 R System of reducing waste might be old news for some but for me it is a useful new tool I can use as a compass as I try to reduce the waste produced in our home.