EARTH DAY 2013

REDUCE

What is reducing? Reducing  means reducing your consumption or buying less. You don’t have to worry if you buy less or ‘use’ ‘less’  because you can reuse them later on! which save a lot of money.

Benefits

Its similar to the benefits or recycling, but the main points are:

•  Prevents pollution caused by reducing the need to harvest new raw materials;
•  Saves energy and especially MONEY.
• Reduces the amount of wastes! If you buy a lot you might throw them when they get older which would end up with tons of garbages either in your cabinet or the corner of your room.
• Allows products to be used to their fullest extent.

For example:

• Buy things that doesn’t use a lot of plastics or things that are not recyclable.
• Buy only things that you think you really need.
•  You can walk with your friends, biking, taking a bus (since many people are in one car) instead of driving a car. You can have fun with your friends too while walking and talking.
• Have a compost bin at home so that things inside would decompose, and you won’t have to throw it but you can use it for soil (fertilizer).
• You can use E-copies instead of hard copies such as books, magazines, etc that needs to use papers from the tree!
• Save energy such as turning off the lights every time you leave your room or unplug plugs that aren’t using at the moment.
• Save water such as  turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth, while you’re washing yourself with soap.
• Save water by keeping the used water for toilet, cleaning the floor, or for plants.

So after you reduce whatever you’re reducing, you’re actually saving them for the next process which is ‘reuse'. By doing this first step, you won’t have to spend a lot of your money and you can also stop yourself from buying too much things!


                                                                         REUSE

What is reuse? To reuse now is s to use an item again after it has been used. Basically whenever you finished using a thing, you would throw it away but these wastes are actually useful in some other ways too, it has its own benefits. By doing this, it helped time and especially “money”. Everything cost money, so why not start reusing things from now on?

Benefits

• You use less energy to reuse things you want to use again.
• Manufacturing in factory is no need for reuse in common.
• It reduce pollution and waste.
• It increase the savings such as money, energy, time.

What are the things that are reusable?

Carrier bags and twist ties.

• Plastic cost a lot of global warming, so reuse for bin bags in the house would be good.
• Paper bags can be use for  wrapping gifts, making cover pages for book etc. (DIY)
• Twist ties can be used to wrap the loose things together such as computer wires.

Envelopes

• Carefully open the envelopes can let you reuse it again by sticking up new information such as names and address on the top of the envelope.
• Reuse as scrap papers.

Jars and pots

• Clean the jars or pots by putting something else into the jar for example:
• Things like candie(s) can be in the jar.
• Its easier to organize them, and it's also saving!
• You don’t need to buy new container for candies.

Newspaper, cardboard and bubble wrap

• Use for packing stuff when you’re moving house.

Old clothes

• can be made into other textile items such as cushion covers or teapot cosies.

Packaging

• Such as foil and egg cartons can be donated to schools and nurseries, where they can be use in art and craft projects.

Scrap paper

• Use for writing notes or calculate math problems.

Used wood

• Can be used as making a house for you animal, a little box, decoration (walls), or even creating fire when you’re going to the camp.

It’s not just reusing it because when you reused already and you think it’s time to throw it away (too old, or damaged enough to throw away), you can still do another step which is recycle it! Isn’t that ‘ two in one’ very helpful to our earth?

RECYCLE

What is recycle? Recycle is a process to change materials (waste) into new products of potentially useful materials; and there are steps that you could follow to recycle things:

Step 1 Collection and Processing

• Collect recyclables including:
• Curbside collection
• Drop-off centers, and deposit
• Refund programs

• After collection, send those recyclables to:
• recovery facility to be 1. sorted 2. cleaned 3.processed into materials that are useable.
• Recyclables’ prices goes up and down depends on the supply and demands, so don’t give up if the price is too low.

Step 2 Manufacturing

• More and more of today's products are being manufactured with recycled content. Common household items that contain recycled materials include:
• A lot of products are being manufactured with recycled content such as the common household items:
• Newspapers and Paper towel
• Aluminum, plastic, and glass soft drink containers
• Steel cans
• Plastic laundry detergent bottles

• Recycled things are also being used with new ways too.

Step 3 Purchasing New Products Made From Recycled Materials:

• Shop for things that are able to be recycled or easily recycled.
• Nowadays we can also see malls using paper bags instead of plastic bags.

Here are some of the terms used:

• Recycled-content product:
• This tells you that, the product is manufactured from the recycled materials
•  Post Consumer content:

• This is similar to recycled-content product, but the materials are collected from consumers or business through the recycling program.
•  Recyclable product:
• This one are the products that can be collected, processed and manufactured into new products after reuse (which is pretty good).
• It doesn't  necessarily have recycled materials included.
• Check local recycling program before you buy the products.

Benefits

·         The amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators would reduce.

·         It can keep natural sources such as timber, water, minerals, and energy.

·         Reduce the causes of pollution by no need of  collect new materials.

·         Reduces greenhouse gas emissions such as global warming that people are worried nowadays.

·         Help the future generations for good environment.

By recycling, the factories won’t have to collect new materials for their products which won’t cost money and so do energy. So Let’s do this now shall we?