⏳ Estimated Reading Time: 10 - 12 minutes

Describe changes to current practices that could reduce the amount of generated waste and their associated benefits and drawbacks.

The 5 R's

Reducing solid waste requires a multifaceted approach. The 5 R’s provide a framework for sustainable living, and refusing is the first step in this hierarchy. Click through the tabs to learn about each of the 5 R's:

Refuse
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle
Rot

Refuse

A GIF of a middle-aged white male in a green sweater shaking his head "no" — **Politely REFUSE items you don't need.**

By refusing items, we actively prevent waste from entering our lives. This can take two forms:

Declining to participate in waste-generating activities:
- say no to single use plastic bags and disposable cutlery and straws
- do not participate in balloon releases
Refusing to accumulate what we don’t need:
- politely decline freebies you don't need
- decline unnecessary promotional items
- do not buy products that harm the environment

Reduce

a woman looking at produce in a plastic bag in one hand and produce without a bag in the other. — **When faced with the choice, REDUCE waste by avoiding overpackaged items.**

Reduction is the process of intentionally consuming less. Here are some ways you can reduce the amount of waste you generate:

Buy only what you need:
- do you NEED a new phone?
Quality over Quantity:
- choose high-quality products that last longer. My dad used to say "the most expensive thing you buy is sometimes the cheapest" because you have to replace it more frequently
Avoid overpackaged goods:
- choose products with minimal packaging

Reuse

Ways a family can reuse items clockwise from top left 1) a child eating and drinking out of reusable containers, 2) hand-me-down clothing, 3) a playroom filled with secondhand furniture and toys, 4) a baby in a blue plaid cloth diaper, 5) a water table turned into a planter, 6) a very small child wearing a backpack that goes down to his knees next to a picture of the same child wearing the same backpack years later. — **The collage above shows some ways our family REUSES items. What can you REUSE in your life?**

Reusing is the process of doing just that: reusing things that you already have. Reusing provides a trifold approach to waste reduction:

Preserves Resources:
- extending the lifespan of items that have already been made
- reducing the demand for raw materials and manufacturing
Minimizes Landfill Waste:
- Reusing items prevents them from ending up in landfills
Reduces Pollution:
- Resource extraction, processing, and manufacturing generates pollution and is energy-intensive, reusing minimizes this

In our family, we reuse in several ways:

we all use reusable water bottles, containers, and cups (top left: my son is eating and drinking out of reusable containers)
our kids wear each other's clothes, and we hand them down to my nephew (top right: both kids wore this shirt)
we purchase furniture and other items on secondhand sites (middle left: all furniture and trains are secondhand)
when our kids were younger, we used cloth diapers (middle right: my oldest in a newborn cloth diaper)
we repurpose things that are no longer useful for their original purpose (bottom left: we turned their water table into a planter)
our kids use their backpacks for multiple years until they break (bottom right: my son got this backpack when he turned 3 and used it until he was 6)

How do you reuse in your home?

Recycle

If something can’t be reused and you couldn’t do without buying it, you can try to recycle it. Approximately 75% of our municipal solid waste (MSW) is recyclable.

A man in a materials recycling facility operating a forklift to move processed recyclables around the facility. — **Materials Recycling Facilities (MRFs) require energy and money, but they keep items out of the landfill and provide jobs for local residents.**

Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) are facilities that sort and process recyclables. They do require an energy input to separate, clean, and refashion items into new items, but they are keeping items out of the landfill and provide relatively high paying jobs that do not require high levels of education.

Primary recycling is when we take the waste and make it into the same thing. For example, recycling newspapers to make more newspapers is primary recycling.

Secondary recycling is when waste materials are made into different, recyclable or non-recyclable, products. For example, I used to have a bearded dragon in my classroom. His tank had a reptile carpet on the floor of his tank. The carpet was made from recycled plastic bottles. This was secondary recycling because the plastic bottles were made into a reptile carpet instead of more plastic bottles.

Plastic is generally considered to be a very valuable recyclable but there are many different types of plastic in use in society. In order to recycle plastic efficiently, it must be sorted into one of the seven major categories and not every plastic is recyclable. Just because an item has the “recycling triangle” does not mean that it is always recyclable, especially in smaller cities and towns.

The system of putting chasing arrow triangles on plastic and numbering the type of plastic was created by the plastic industry. Numbers 3, 4, 5, and 7 are difficult to recycle and often not recycled at all. Nothing over 5 can be recycled, even if you do put it in your recycling bin. Usually, only numbers 1 and 2 are easily recycled.

A guide to recycling symbols for different types of plastics.
Recyclable: “1 PETE” and “2 HDPE”.
Difficult to Recycle/Not Recyclable: “3 V”, “4 LDPE”, “5 PP”, “7 OTHER” — ***Not all plastics are recyclable, even if they have the chasing arrows on them.***

Number 1 plastics can be turned into carpets, jackets, film, strapping, and new bottles. Number 2 plastics can be turned into drainage tiles, sheet plastic, and recycling bins.

Aluminum is our best recycling success story so far.

Buying recycled items or items that have been made through the recycling process helps close the entire recycling “loop.”

Even with all the benefits, many do not recycle because it requires more effort. The best way to increase the amount of people that are recycling is to...

make recycling mandatory (or cheaper than trash collection)
easy
offer incentives for recycling
provide political and industrial support

For example, in our town, the county provides us with recycling bins, but we have to purchase our own trash bins, incentivizing recycling.

Rot

A child with a green shirt stands outdoors pointing to a decomposing carved pumpkin sitting on fallen leaves. — **We taught my son that composting his pumpkin allowed the nutrients in the pumpkin back into the environment, feeding earthworms and other organisms.**

The last R, Rot, stands for composting. When done correctly, composting can significantly reduce waste production and benefit the environment:

Diverts organic waste:
- allows us to keep kitchen scraps and garden residue out of landfills
Reduces methane emissions:
- composting organic material prevents it from producing methane, as happens when it decomposes in a landfill
Nutrient-rich soil amendment:
- compost can be added back to gardens, improving water retention and soil fertility
Greenhouse gas reduction:
- composting reduces food waste and loss, which generates an estimated 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions
- composting also reduces the need for fertilizers
Circular economy:
- allows us to repurpose organic materials sustainably

Reducing waste requires thoughtful decision-making and action. Not everyone is a fan of waste reduction but knowing the resources on Earth are finite and that disposing of waste comes with a whole host of environmental and health issues makes it all the more important to consider waste reduction on a daily, personal basis.

Essential Knowledge

Recycling is a process by which certain solid waste materials are processed and converted into new products.

Recycling is one way to reduce the current global demand for minerals, but this process is energy-intensive and can be costly.

Composting is the process of organic matter such as food scraps, paper, and yard waste decomposing. The product of this decomposition can be used as fertilizer. Drawbacks to composting include odor and rodents.

E-Waste

E-waste poses several challenges:

- ⚠️ Hazardous Components: Many electronic devices contain toxic substances like lead, mercury, cadmium, and flame retardants.
- ♻️ Resource Depletion: E-waste contains valuable materials (metals, plastics, rare earth elements) that can be recycled, but improper disposal leads to resource wastage.
- ☎️ Growing Volume: The rapid pace of technological advancement results in a constant stream of outdated devices.

If disposed of improperly, chemicals from e-waste can end up in landfills. If not treated properly after disposal, humans and the environment can be exposed to the hazardous substances in electronics.

Let's take the 5 R's and apply them to e-waste, to see how we can reduce e-waste:

🙅🏻‍♀️ Refuse (click to reveal)

Refuse to purchase electronics that cannot be reused or used for several years.

📱 Reduce (click to reveal)

Buy only what you need.

Do you need an e-notebook, e-reader, phone, tablet, laptop, chromebook, and desktop computer?

☎️ Reuse (click to reveal)

Reuse electronics as long as you can.

If you need a new device, it can be refurbished, resold, or donated.

Do you need a new phone every 2 years?

♻️ Recycle (click to reveal)

Electronics can be recycled. Many manufacturers allow customers to turn in used electronics and they will recycle them.

In our town, we have a free service that picks up electronics, safely deletes all data, and either refurbishes them or recycles them.

🍄‍🟫 Rot (click to reveal)

This is not applicable since electronics are not composed of organic material. They will not biodegrade in a compost pile like yard waste or food waste.

Essential Knowledge

E-waste can be reduced by recycling and reuse. E-wastes may contain hazardous chemicals, including heavy metals such as lead and mercury, which can leach from landfills into groundwater if they are not disposed of properly.

Landfill Mitigation

Landfills use up a lot of valuable land. To mitigate this, we have developed a few strategies to either generate energy from waste and/or create parks and habitats on the land after the landfill is full. Explore these strategies below. Does your town do any of these? Our town has built a park on our old landfill. They explored adding a facility that generates electricity from the landfill gases, but it was too expensive. But the power company did build solar panels on one side of the park.

🔥 Burning Waste for Energy (click to reveal)

Remember our discussion of incineration in the previous lesson?

Over half of the incineration facilities are waste-to-energy facilities, which means the heat produced from incinerating MSW is used to power homes and businesses. These facilities not only have all the advantages of incineration but also extract energy from the waste by creating steam or electricity.

Many incineration facilities add resource recovery, which is basically separating recyclables from the rest of the MSW to their operations.

When done correctly, all that leaves the WTE plant is ash and cleaned flue gases or simply water vapor. WTE plants are more popular in other countries than they are in the United States. The graphic below shows the percent of total municipal solid waste that is burned with energy recovery in selected countries. Can you guess why small countries might prefer to burn their waste instead of burying it in landfills?

A horizontal bar graph comparing the percentage of waste processed in Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facilities across ten different regions or countries. Japan leads with the highest percentage at 72%, followed by Scandinavia at 53%, and Switzerland at 47%. — ***Japan and the other leading countries are smaller than the United States, and, as such, have limited land areas for landfill construction.***

🏞️ Landfill Reclamation (click to reveal)

A former landfill turned park in Sarasota, Florida. — ***Rothenbach Park in Sarasota, Florida. The park has walking trails and two playgrounds.***

After a landfill reaches its capacity, it can be transformed into a useful space. This is known as landfill reclamation.

We can't just plant some trees on top of a landfill and open it as a park. It requires time, planning, and money.

The site needs to be assessed and hazardous waste, if present, needs to be removed. Then, the soil needs to be stabilized and graded, allowing for proper drainage. Next, developers need to plant native plants and install infrastructure, such as trails, playgrounds, and restrooms. Once the park is ready for visitors, users should be educated on what they can and cannot do in the park. Here are some common rules in Landfill Parks:

1. 1. 1. 1. No Smoking due to the flammable methane gas that seeps from landfills.
      2. Access the top of the "mountain" carefully, as waste continues to settle.
      3. No pets so they do not dig into the former landfill.

The entire park will need continued soil, water, and air quality maintenance to ensure the safety of guests.

⚡️ Generating Electricity from Landfill Gas (click to reveal)

Generating electricity from landfill gas involves capturing the gases produced during the decomposition of organic material in landfills and converting them to energy.

Landfill gas is collected through a series of wells and pipes installed in the landfill site. These wells capture the gases as they are released during the decomposition process. The gas must be purified before it can be used in combustion in engines or turbines.

The purified gas is used as a fuel source to power engines or turbines. As the gas burns, it produces heat energy, which is converted into mechanical energy to turn turbines and generate electricity.

By converting landfill gas into electricity, not only is renewable energy produced, but harmful greenhouse gases like methane are also captured and prevented from being released into the atmosphere. This process helps reduce the environmental impact of landfills and contributes to sustainable energy practices.

Essential Knowledge

Landfill mitigation strategies range from burning waste for energy to restoring habitat on former landfills for use as parks.

The combustion of gases produced from decomposition of organic material in landfills can be used to turn turbines and generate electricity. This process reduces landfill volume.

AP Exam Tip

You should know the 5 R's and the best ways to reduce e-waste.

Refuse, Reduce, and Reuse are better than Recycling because they eliminate waste at the source.

[CC BY-NC-SA 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION - INTENDED ONLY FOR USE WITHIN LESSON.