If you cannot stop the bleeding, reduce it until you can
There’s a reason the saying goes “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”
Reducing comes first, then reuse what you can, and recycle what you can’t.
Refuse > Reduce > Reuse > Repurpose > Recycle
5 Rs rule
What’s the difference between Refuse and Reduce here? I always took Reduce to mean using as little plastic as possible, which to m3 would include refusing the use of single-use plastics.
Same with Reuse and Repurpose: Reuse it however you can, regardless of its original purpose.
3 Rs has the rhetoric benefit of being a tricolon, which helps with keeping it concise and memorable.
Would you like a plastic bag for your shopping?
Refuse: No thanks.
Reduce: I’ll take just 1 bag and stuff it all in there, don’t need 2.
Repurpose: it’s ok because I’ll use this bag as a bin liner.
Wouldn’t that prevent people from refilling the bottles?
No. It just prevents the lid to get “lost”.
I think it’s about more than that. Where I love, the caps and bottles are made out of different plastics. Most recycling stations here only accept plastic bottles without their caps, because the caps cannot be recycled. Forcing the caps to be part of the bottle essentially forces it to be of the same plastic. Or that’s how I understand it at least, so the entirety of the bottle can be recycled, and so the unrecyclable caps don’t end up everywhere creating microplastics as they slowly break down.
Oh maybe I haven’t looked into it. I just had some bottles with fixed cap and talked from my user experience.
Can imagine it must be a pain to use.
Yes. And it’s also a hinderance when you want to pour it into a glass.
