5 rs of waste management

Recycling is usually on the top in waste management, but today, it's at last...

According to the 5 R's of waste management, four actions are required before 'recycling': reduce, reuse, recycle and recover. Integrating this approach into your business will minimize landfill waste and can take waste management to the next level. Through this blog, we will learn about the 5 R's methodology and the benefits of putting it into practice.

Applying these 5 rs of waste management can positively influence the outcome of your program by reducing the amount of waste produced. In the 5 R's methodology, consider recycling as a last resort after attempting to reduce, reuse, or recover. Before disposing of your trash, walk through these steps:

Reduce

Reducing trash is a very crucial step 5 R's of waste management that you can do. By reducing trash, you can avert the unnecessary usage of resources such as water, fuel, energy and minerals. Which indirectly means less waste to manage.

How can we reduce waste?

1. Make grocery purchase in bulk to lessen packaging
2. Choose less plastic packaging products
3. Say ‘no’ to a plastic bag
4. Stick a "no junk mail" sign-on letterbox
5. Use reusable shopping bags
6. Prefer reusable items instead of disposable 
7. Use a reusable container for lunch.

Reuse

The next important thing we can do is try to reuse your waste material so that it doesn’t end up into rubbish or landfill. It also means that you need not buy new items, this will indirectly save your money, energy and resources which would have been required to make the new items.

How can we reuse waste?

1. Donate unwanted toys, clothes and books to NGO’s
2. Use plastic bowls for storing or freezing food items
3. Save food wrapping paper and boxes for reuse
4. Use old jars for storing
5. Shop from second-hand stores or online trading websites to buy refurbished items
6. Make memo pads with waste paper
7. Re-use envelopes 

Recycle

Recycling includes some steps of reprocessing waste materials to produce a new product. For example, recycling plastic bottles to make a door mat.

What can be recycled?

1. The key products that can be recycled are cardboard, paper, glass, tin, plastic containers and aluminium.
2. Composting and worm farms can be used for recycling organic waste.

Buy recycled

Prefer to buy products that are manufactured by recycled materials.

Recover

Recover is the process of using waste material without any pre-processing. For example, waste oil which cannot be recycled for reuse can be burnt for energy. Recovered energy from waste oil reduces addiction to imported oil.

So, after discussing 5 R’s of waste management, which method you could like to improve or introduce in your business? Strategies your approach toward your current waste production and disposal and offer benefits to your business as well as the environment.