Reuse means using an item over again in its existing form without major changes to it. Since the materials can be reused, they don't end up in landfills or need to be treated to prevent pollution.
Reusing products when possible is even better than recycling, because the items do not need to be reprocessed before they can be used again. You can provide products for others to reuse, and you can reuse other people's products (think antique stores!)
What You Should Know
- A typical household uses about 700 paper grocery bags in two years--that's equivalent to all the wood in a 20-year-old tree. Meanwhile, one canvas grocery bag lasts approximately five years.
- More than 10 billion plastic water bottles are discarded each year, and nine out of ten of them end up as garbage clogging our landfills, or as litter despoiling our walking paths and roadways.
- Each day Americans drink 45 million cups of coffee or tea in disposable cups. If every coffee-drinking American switched to using a reusable thermos, they would prevent seven million pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted every day, thanks to the energy saved from not having to manufacture and recycle or dispose of in a landfill all those paper cups.
- Americans throw away 570 disposable diapers every second.
Easy Things You Can Do
Use cloth bags. Paper or plastic? Neither! Invest in some durable cloth bags and reuse them. After each shopping trip, return them to your trunk, then train yourself to remember, before entering a shop, to simply grab them and go. And if you forget to bring your bags into the store, try this: place your purchased items back into the cart, loose, then load them directly into your cloth bags once you reach your car. It's easy!
Use a thermos and a reusable water bottle. Spend a couple of bucks on a thermos and tell your favorite coffee shop to fill 'er up for your morning caffeine fix (you'll save ten cents and the waste of a paper cup). Similarly, buy a reusable water bottle and fill up from your tap instead of buying bottled water. But don't stop there: buy a liter of soda and fill up your thermos every day instead of going through four aluminum cans, or make a pitcher of juice and fill up your thermos instead of throwing away six juice boxes.
Buy reusable goods. Buy rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones, a $20 reusable camera instead of a disposable one, and an ink refilling kit instead of a disposable printer cartridge. Some other examples of reusable goods are reusable metal coffee filters, razors with refillable blades, and refillable pens and pencils. In general, never buy anything that says "disposable."
Get crazy about cloth. Work on cutting back on paper products wherever you can. Invest in some pretty cloth napkins and try to use them a few nights a week, at least, instead of paper napkins. Use handkerchiefs instead of facial tissues, and resort to rags instead of paper towels for wiping up spills. And if you have a baby in diapers, consider this: Eighteen billion disposable diapers are dumped into U.S. landfills each year, and each one takes up to 500 years to decompose. For the sake of future generations, switch to reusable, washable cloth diapers (or forego the diaper debate altogether and try the new flushable gDiaper).
Give "green" gifts. Save and reuse as many boxes, bows, ribbons, tyrofoam packing peanuts, and tissue and wrapping paper as you can (unwrap slowly so you don't wrinkle it!). Invest in colorful cloth gift bags - or make your own - that are easier to reuse than boxes with wrapping paper.
Become Mr. or Ms. Fix-It. When something breaks, don't immediately throw it away. First, see if you can fix it yourself--for example, you can easily repair most scratches on Cd's with a rag and some toothpaste. If that doesn't work, research other inexpensive methods or perhaps a refinishing kit. Decide whether to have a professional fix it, which is sometimes cheaper than buying a new one.
Donate. Gently worn items, from furniture to appliances, clothing to books and toys can often be passed along for others to enjoy. Worthy organizations abound that will be happy to receive your donations: Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Parca, local shelters, churches, are just a few places available to you. Freecycle is another great option to give your donated items a second (or third) life, plus you can find free things you need there as well. But note, unlike Goodwill, et. al, Freecycle does not provide tax breaks for the items you donate.
Reuse, reuse, reuse!
Source: 30 Simple Energy Things You Can Do To Save The Earth (PG&E), and 51 Easy Ways You Can Prevent Global Warming (and save money!) by Jeffrey Langholz, Ph.D. and Kelly Turner