The 3R's Rule.
The three R's rule, also known as the three R's of ecology or just the 3R's, is a proposal about consume habits, popularized by the environmental organization Greenpeace, that pretends to develop habit such as responsible consumption. This concept makes reference to strategies for the management of wastes that try to be more sustainable with the environment and to specifically give priority to the reduction in the volume of generated wastes.
1R= Reduce
If we reduce the problem, we reduce the impact in the environment. The problems of awareness should be solved starting by this R. The reduction can be realized in 2 levels: reduction of goods consumption, and reduction of energy consumption. Nowadays the production of energy produces numerous wastes (nuclear wastes, carbon dioxide…) the objective would be:
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2R= Reuse
Second most important R, equally important as "Reducing" because it also reduces the impact in the environment, indirectly. This R is based in reusing an object to give it a second useful life. All the materials or goods can have more than one useful life, whether repairing them for a same use, or using imagination to create a different use or incorporating them into a productive process.
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3R= Recycle
Recycling is a process which aims to transform wastes into new products or into matter for its subsequent use.
Recycling prevents the disuse of potentially useful materials, the consumption of new raw material is reduced, along with reducing the usage of energy, air pollution (through incineration) and water pollution (through landfills), as well as reducing greenhouse effect gases emission in comparison with the production of plastics. There are a lot of recyclable materials, including paper, cardboard, glass, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, some plastics, fabrics and textiles, woods and electronic components. In other cases it is not possible to accomplish recycling because of the technical difficulty or the high cost of the process, so usually the material is reused to produce other materials that are for other purposes, such as energetic utilization. It is also possible to accomplish a rescue of components from some complex products, whether it is for their inherent value or for their dangerous nature. |