Waste
As populations and resource demands climb, waste production contributes to emissions of carbon dioxide, leaching of hazardous materials into the soil and waterways, and methane emissions. In America alone, over the course of a decade, 500 trillion pounds of American resources will have been transformed into nonproductive wastes and gases. Thus, a crucial component of sustainable living is being waste conscious. One can do this by reducing waste, reusing commodities, and recycling.
There are a number of ways to reduce waste in sustainable living. One method is reducing paper waste, such as by taking action to cancel junk mail and move paper transactions to an online document. Another method to reduce waste is to buy in bulk, which reduces packaging materials. Preventing food waste is an alternative to organic waste compiling to create costly methane emissions. Food waste can be reintegrated into the environment through composting. Composting can be carried out at home or locally, with community composting. An additional example of how to reduce waste is being cognizant of not buying materials with limited use in excess, such as paint. Reduction aides in reducing the toxicity of waste if non-hazardous or less hazardous items are selected.
By reusing materials, one lives sustainably by not contributing to the addition of waste to landfills. Reuse saves natural resources by decreasing the necessity of raw material extraction. Recycling, a process that breaks down used items into raw materials to make new materials, is a particularly useful means of contributing to the renewal of goods. Recycling incorporates three primary processes; collection and processing, manufacturing, and purchasing recycled products. An offshoot of recycling, upcycling, strives to convert a material into something of similar or greater value in its second life. By integrating measures of reusing, reducing, and recycling one can effectively reduce production of waste and use materials in a sustainable manner.
Read more about this topic: Sustainable Living
Famous quotes containing the word waste:
“It may be romantic to search for the salves of societys ills in slow-moving rustic surroundings, or among innocent, unspoiled provincials, if such exist, but it is a waste of time.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.”
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (18731954)
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (18021885)