The four R's

Reduce

You can reduce waste before you even buy anything.

For example, when you are at the store, take the time to think about what you will be able to reuse or recycle and what you will have to throw away. Reduce means that, throw less.

As the connoisseurs say, one of the best ways to reduce the amount of waste is to stop buying things we don't urgently need. This means that we have to be attentive when we enter a store to buy.

Re-use

A book you've just read, a plastic bag, a tub of cream cheese, an old toy, a sweater you've outgrown… You don't need to throw any of these things away. You can prevent them from going to landfill by reusing them yourself or giving them to someone who can reuse them.

Reusing means saving and reusing things that would normally be thrown away.

Recycle

Of course there are things that you can't keep using, like empty aluminum cans or last year's phone book, but the materials from which those things are made can be reused over and over again by recycling them.

Instead of throwing away aluminum cans, glass bottles, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and other recyclable containers, you can deposit them in the special containers that are on almost every corner. Recycling centers sort materials and send them to factories, which make new products out of them.

• Recycling is turning used paper into pulp and, from this paste, making new paper.

• Recycling is crushing used glass bottles and melting them down to make new glass items.

• Recycling is melting down used aluminum cans, forming sheets of the molten metal, and making new cans or other aluminum products from them.

• Recycling is breaking up and melting down the plastic bottles used to make carpets.

In other words, recycling is turning an old thing into a new one. Sort of like getting something for free.

Reflect

It is the human being's ability to analyze the possible options available to them in order to make intelligent choices. This is the most important er because as soon as we reflect we will immediately realize that it is not profitable, reasonable, or responsible to continue wasting without measure. What is truly human is learning to reduce, reuse and recycle in order to contribute to a longer and more satisfying life on the planet.