WAC #1: Is it More Important to Reduce, Reuse, or Recycle - 9/22/17

WAC #1 - Is It More Important to Reduce, Reuse or Recycle: Victor N. 8B


 Now, is it really important to reduce? Reuse? or Recycle? But, which one is more important. For the short answer, it's important to do all of them. However, there is always one that shines out and is the most important of all, and that is reduce. To summarize, reducing saves you less work than reusing and recycling. I like to think of that's why they put reducing in front of the three R's.

 Reducing is the best thing to do, you don't even have to anything [to hurt the environment]. For every time you go to the store or restaurants, you come back with packaging materials such as plastic bags and containers. That right there ends up in landfills. According to Bethany Wieman of SFGate in her article of What is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? Today each person creates 4.3 pounds of trash, a day. By reducing, you are cutting back on anything, like getting containers, saving water and energy, etc... Again in Bethany Wieman of SFGate in her article of What is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle?, "Manufacturers have reduced the weight of the plastic used in these bottles by 0.6 ounces over the last 30 years." This cuts the amount of plastic each person uses a day. Each person can also reduce, by not wasting paper, drinking from plastic water bottles, and glass. Therefore, reducing is the best thing to do, because you do not have to do anything except cut down from what is bad and doing what will help the Earth instead of hurting it. As it says in Bethany Wieman of SFGate in her article of What is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? in the Reducing Paragraph, “The most essential way to reduce waste is to avoid creating it in the first place.”

Reusing is such an efficient thing to do, but such a hassle to do. The purpose of reusing is to save money, time, and energy by using certain items again, for their purpose or using it another purpose. Reusing can help the Earth, because every time you drink from reusable water bottles or go to the store and use reusable bags, you are cutting down on the amount of plastic. On the other hand, let's say you are using plastic water bottles, you could get sick. According to the Learn More About Reducing, Reusing and Recycling article, “Continuous use of some plastic bottles can lead to health risks if they are made with cheap plastic or if harsh chemicals leach out of those containers with increased use.” Therefore, you shouldn't reuse plastic water bottles. If you are trying to reuse water, it must have been dirty after you use it. You then need to use more energy like a filter to clean the water. For this purpose, reusing is an efficient thing to do, but you end up doing more things that might hurt the environment.

 Recycling is a great thing to do but hurts the environment. Most schools right now in the US are even recycling paper and plastic bottles. According to Bethany Wieman of SFGate in her article of What is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? in the Recycling Paragraph, [recycling] “Keeps usable material out of the landfill.” By recycling, you can take the usable materials and make it into something new. But there always a bad side to it. Let's say you recycle paper. You would need a recycling bin. You need to recycle bottles to make those plastic bins. As it says in the Math of Trash video at 0:41, “The more stuff we throw out, the most stuff we need." According to Math of Trash video from 0:20-0:31, each week there are about '16 million trips' of garbage trucks going around picking up trash and recycling are done, which uses 'billions of gallons of gas fuel'. That 'creates 22 billion pounds of CO2." CO2 is the reason why we have climate change. As you can see, recycling is a great thing to do, but not the best thing to do.

 In conclusion, out of three: reducing, reusing, and recycling, reducing is more important to do. Reducing is more important because it hurts the environment the least. By reducing, you cut back on waste. Comparing to reduce and recycle, you need to do more than you actually need to. As you can see, out of the three R's, I will reduce, but will you?

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