What do we mean by that? Well, you might have heard of the waste hierarchy, also known as the 3 Rs Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
It's a great framework to apply to everyday situations to help you figure out how to minimise the amount of waste you produce.
Let's say you are on your commute to work and heading to your local coffee shop to get your morning latte which comes in a single-use coffee cup. Going through each stage:
Reduce - Single-use coffee cups should be high up on your list of things to reduce as they are not readily recyclable. They contain a thin plastic layer within the paper cup which is there to make sure you don't end up with a soggy cup leaking all over your hand.
Reuse - Using a reusable multi-use coffee cup means that you can still enjoy your morning coffee while saying no to single-use cups. As an added bonus lots of coffee shops now give you a discount as well if you use a reusable cup 🙌.
Recycle - Many reusable coffee cups on the market have been designed to be completely recyclable once they reached the end of their life, unlike the single-use cups.
So using the hierarchy, you would have ended up using a reusable multi-use coffee cup and over a year you would stop hundreds of single-use coffee cups going to landfill. Or, you could have been a real hero and reduced your coffee consumption to zero, go you!
And that's where our mission comes in. We believe the waste hierarchy, the 3 Rs, can be distilled into a simple mindset shift and that as a society we need to:
"Switch from a Single-Use mindset to a Multi-Use one"
Here are a few more examples to get you thinking:
To help you on your journey to a multi-use mindset we have stocked the Reco shop full of multi-use and sustainable alternatives to single-use products.
But this is just the start.
We are building a community to spread our mission and need your help. Join the Reco Hangout.
