Production to Waste Disposal
Collecting and storing garbage in landfills is not a sustainable practice for obvious reasons. Therefore, we must diligently work together to decrease the amount of solid waste we generate.
In addition to the unsustainable consequences of landfilling, there are negative environmental impacts throughout the item production to waste disposal process. Think about all of the steps needed to bring an item into your household. Producers and consumers need to communicate and work together to minimize the environmental impacts of this lengthy CO2-emitting process:
- Extraction of raw materials
- Transport of materials
- Manufacturing/processing/packaging
- Product distribution
- Consumer purchase and consumption
- Consumer disposal/collection
- Hauling to processing facilities and/or landfills
- Recycling processing and landfilling
As an ambassador you will encourage others to think about what they bring into their lives and what they do with it later. If a consumer is unhappy with the choices available, it is important to encourage them to communicate their dissatisfaction and desire for greener alternatives with producers. Empowering enough consumers to speak up and change their buying habits will ultimately advance more sustainable business practices. If the demand for a company’s products decreases, their profits will be negatively impacted.
Most of us are very familiar with the motto “reduce, reuse, recycle” as the order in which we should attempt to reduce our waste. Unfortunately, given our current fast and convenience-focused lifestyle, we need to be even more proactive than previous generations to minimize the impact of our environmental footprint.
Therefore, Mecklenburg County has expanded the most common waste reduction strategies to 7 key categories. We recognize there could be many more waste reduction tactics that begin with the letter R, such as “repair”, “resell, “refurbish”, etc. Following are the main categories that encompass numerous others:
- Rethink: Before you bring an item into your possession, think about if you need it and what you will do with it after you are finished with it.
- Refuse: When possible, refuse excess packaging and other items that are routinely given to you that you will need to dispose of eventually.
- Reduce: Think of how you can reduce your consumption or reduce packaging of items you do need.
- Rot: Food is a large percentage of the American solid waste stream. If you are not able to consume food before its expiration, and/or if you have food scraps, consider composting instead of putting in the trash.
- Reuse: Avoid single-use/disposable products and choose durable reusable items instead.
- Repurpose: If an item no longer serves its original purpose, can it be used for something else by you or someone else?
- Recycle Right: ONLY recycle accepted materials. “When in doubt, throw it out.”
