The Three R's Represent The Fundamental Concepts For Contributing To The Green Movement

The three R's represent the  fundamental concepts for contributing to the Green movement. 

1) Reduce - Cutting back on how many resources we consume. This is the cornerstone for living a Greener lifestyle, it is usually one of the hardest to adopt.  So much of our culture is based on bigger is better and the newest gadget is cooler then the old one.  We tend to forget, and as humans we have built in forgetters.  Beyond reducing consumption, when we do need to aquire things, we can strive for better choices such as buying recycled products or locally produced items, to reduce the environmental impact of transportation.

2) Reuse - Stretching the value of what we consume by putting items to further use.  Some examples are converting food scraps into compost.  Turning an old shirt into a pajama top or cleaning rag, reusing grocery bags for recycling bottles, cans, and paper, share or donate your items for resale.  Before you toss anything into the trash or even the recycling bin think about ways to get more mileage out of it. 

3) Recycle - Convenient curbside recycling programs have helped many of us do a better job of reducing how much paper, plastic, and metal we we put into the watse stream.  But we can stretch our recycling efforts further by finding ways to recycle products like old computers, cell phones, and other electronics, furniture (there are some great programs that will gladly re-distribute used furniture to those in need www.FurnitureShareHouse.org is a local Westchester charity), large appliances, and more.

These three fundamental concepts can impact decisions about the way a home is constructed, maintained, and lived in.