This website is about learning why you should reuse items and opportunities for reuse.
What is sustainability? It is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Sustainability looks at how to add value to the organization, employee, customer, and community. Reuse is one of the ways to accomplish sustainability.
Reuse or Trash? An unwanted item can go in the trash to the landfill. :-( Or You can reuse, repurpose or upcycle it (upcycle means to reuse discarded objects or materials in such a way as to create a product of a higher value).
You can donate it! A donated item can generate revenue for a nonprofit AND make people happy by helping them out with an item they need. It can also be tax deductible. :-)
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2015), the benefits of reuse are that it saves money and energy, prevents pollution that causes climate change, reduces the need to extract more raw materials, reduces the amount of waste that will need to be recycled or sent to landfills, and helps sustain the environment for future generations.
Reuse also creates jobs and helps the economy. According to a 2011 study from the Tellus Institute, reusing 10,000 tons of waste creates between 41 and 216 jobs while landfilling it creates only 6 jobs (Bradley & Remolador, 2015).
Reuse also plays a large role in the circular economy where products are designed for longevity with multiple reuses and eventual recycling (Houten, 2014).
A circular economy is an economic system in which materials are not wasted, because products are designed and built to be part of a network where reuse and refurbishment of a product, component, or material assures a continuous cycle of resources (Houten, 2014).
Why do we need to reuse more and move towards a circular economy? According to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, in the next 15 years three billion additional middle class consumers will flood the marketplace (n.d.)! A new way to meet everyone’s demand is necessary.
Additional global trends in resource constraints, emerging technologies, increasing urbanization, and new legislation around waste regulation are also causing a shift towards a circular economy (Ellen McArthur Foundation, n.d.).
In Phoenix we currently have a 17% diversion rate (which is the percent of total waste that doesn’t go to the landfill) with a waste reduction goal of 40% by 2020.
Recycling is not the only answer to reduce waste. To achieve this goal we need to incorporate reuse by considering what we buy and what we do with it when we no longer need it. Can a product have a longer life through repair? Can it be reused?
Through education and action, we can change our patterns of living and achieve our waste reduction goals!