The Three Rs Are Woefully Inadequate.
The Five Rs Are A Bit Better.

You’ve probably heard of the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. These terms were first popularized in the late-1970s, following the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The idea was simple: Give the public a motto for reducing waste and aid the ability of governments to manage it.

Despite our familiarity with the three Rs, and the fact that “zero waste” trends abound, waste is still a huge problem globally.

In 2013, Bea Johnson gave the world the Five Rs with her book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste. They are: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. The Five Rs give us a new framework for dealing with waste by helping us acknowledge the habits that lead to waste to begin with.

Let's break them down.

Refuse

Refusing helps eliminate a lot of waste from the start. It's about saying “no” to free stuff that becomes instant waste. It takes a bit of practice and preparation (read: resources of time and money) to find and actively incorporate reusable alternatives into your daily life.

Here are some things you can refuse on a daily basis: single-use plastics like disposable coffee cups, utensils, and straws (provided you don’t need them to drink). Even bioplastic straws, which are theoretically compostable, often end up in the trash because municipal composting facilities can’t identify them as bioplastic.

We're all conditioned to say “yes” and accept swag bags, free coupons, magazines, flyers, and anything else, just because it's free. Accept the things you need, and refuse the rest. You can even refuse junk mail by using a free service like Catalog Choice.

To help you get in the habit of refusing, look at what you're always accepting. If it's coffee cups, find a reusable one. If it's flyers, take a photo with your phone and save it for later. There are sustainable ways to refuse that don't mean you have to go without.

Reduce

Reduce what you're purchasing by being mindful about what you need and want. For example, instead of using lots of little plastic bottles for your daily shower, try reducing that to one bar of soap that can do it all. Multipurpose products work wonders at reducing packaging without sacrificing quality.

Before making purchases, ask yourself if you really need the item you’re buying. If you do, look at the quality. While price is a huge factor, try to find the best quality in your budget. Well-made products will last longer, reducing the times you'll need to repurchase. Another tip is to take care of your possessions by following cleaning instructions and labels so everything lasts a long time.

Reuse

Reusing and repairing go hand in hand. When you're deciding whether to toss something out and buy a new one, ask yourself if you can find a way to reuse or repair it instead. This applies to clothing, furniture, and technology, but also personal care. Products that can be refilled or bought “pumpless” reduce packaging waste and usually come with perks like free shipping.

Typically, they are also less expensive per ounce (like the products in our closed-loop Bulk Refill Program, which give you a permanent 15–25% off).

Reusing also means selling or donating used items you no longer need so that they go to loving homes instead of the landfill. Have a yard sale, hop on Craigslist, or ask your friends and family if they have a need for things you don't.

Recycle

One of the most obvious ways to reduce waste is to recycle, but recycling is far from perfect. These two studies cite that only about 10% of the plastic slated for recycling actually gets recycled. Not to mention that most new plastic is made from the byproducts of the oil and gas industry.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t recycle. Definitely recycle! But we also need to invest in alternative packaging like highly recyclable metal and drive up demand for alternative packaging, like compostable paper deodorant tubes.

Rot

“Rot”—fun to say, fun to do. You might be thinking “there is no way I have time to compost” and that might be true for you. If it is, that’s fair and that’s life.

There are lots of different ways to compost now that make it a bit easier than it used to be, including curbside or municipal composting that is now available in many urban cities around the world. Find out if your municipality composts here.

Vermiculture composting is a great option if you have limited (or zero) outdoor space and no curbside option There are also composting pick-up services, and drop-off spots in many cities and towns. Collect food scraps in your fridge or freezer so they don’t smell, and then make your drop weekly.

We designed our paper deodorant tubes and paper lip balm tubes to be 100% backyard or curbside recyclable. Make the swap from plastic tubes to plastic-free zero-waste paper tubes and watch your waste output drop.

Who's Responsible For Trash?

There is a serious problem with putting our waste problem onto individuals, and it’s worth calling that out here. People without ample time and financial resources are not likely candidates for alternative methods of reducing waste, many of which require both. How likely are you to set up a vermiculture bin in your home kitchen, if you’re working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet? (Not very.) Not to mention the mental drain of living in poverty—it leaves little space for problem solving waste solutions. This is to say nothing of corporate lobbies that are influencing what types of materials are used (and then trashed), as well as rampant “buy this!” marketing that makes people feel inadequate if they don’t have new stuff.

Cities that make composting a requirement and highly accessible are on the right track and are doing a good job of averting trash from landfills. It works because they’ve taken the onus off the individual and made the problem a collective one with a collective solution.

The Five Rs can’t and won’t be the only answer to solving our waste problem (and subsequently bringing down our levels of carbon emissions), but they do offer a more fleshed out framework for thinking about the objects we bring into our lives and how we dispose of them.

Written By Vera Kachouh