- Free Stuff!
- Saves a lot of money
- Less garbage in landfills
- Fewer resources used for new materials and less emissions produced
- Reduce the demand for unethical labor to make new items
- Prevent reusable materials from being resold at a marked-up value to developing countries
Reusing versus Recycling
These days, everyone seems to know about recycling. Often it is mistakenly seen as the best environmental solution to trash. But recycling is not the only answer to waste, nor is it the best.
The order of waste diversion, or “the waste hierarchy,” starts with reduction, which is to cut off waste at the source by producing less packaging and fewer items. The next step is reuse, which is using items again for their intended purpose. Reuse cuts down on the amount of waste produced and savors the “embodied energy” of a product (the energy that has already been put into producing the item). The lowest on the waste hierarchy is recycling, in which items are broken down to create raw materials again. This puts material back into the production stream, but requires more energy input than reuse.