how does reduce reuse recycle help climate change essay

MSU Extension MI Money Health

Reduce, recycle and reuse to decrease climate change.

Brenda Long, Michigan State University Extension - June 14, 2023

More energy conservation could affect the occurrence of major storms and hurricanes.

In recent years hurricanes and storms caused major damage and affected millions, including Michigan residents. As storms of this intensity become more and more frequent, climate change and variability simply cannot be ignored.

Climate change is any major change in measures of climate, which include temperature, precipitation, rainfall, snow and wind. These changes last for decades or longer. Many factors are causing climate change, including human activities through burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees, planting trees and building developments. Most scientists now agree that climate change is happening. Read more in this publication from the  Michigan Department of Public Health.

What can you do to help? Adopt more green practices like recycling in your home and workplace is one recommendation by the Michigan Department of Community Health  (MDCH). Each of us makes many decisions in our homes and communities about the products we buy and personal habits. Some decisions result in more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. When added together, we all contribute to climate change. We all can make a difference by reducing consumption.

We can help protect our natural resources and reduce the amount of waste produced by following the three R's: "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," according to the  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) .  

• Reduce the amount of products you use.
• Reuse products instead of throwing them away.
• Recycle waste products.

Thinking about your current habits and making a few minor changes can make a big difference! Consider some of these changes:

• Buy the amount of a product needed rather than the "economy" size.
• Save energy by using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of standard light bulbs.
• Look for good, used items online, at garage sales and other local sources.
• Reuse and recycling products like plastic grocery bags.
• Recycle items like batteries, electronics, plastic and paper.

You can find the amount of energy that you’ll save using a  tool from the E.P.A.

Recycling is easy and takes a small amount of time. The  Michigan Department Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (DEGLE) has a lot of information for you about recycling and its benefits. Learn what all of those recycling symbols mean too. Find the list of hazardous household waste and recycling centers in Michigan.

Consider your existing household activities and decide how a few personal efforts to reduce, recycle and reuse could respond to specific challenges of climate change.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension . For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu . To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters . To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts , or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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The impact of recycling on climate change

When considering climate change mitigation and reducing your carbon footprint, you probably think of driving less and turning out the lights. But did you know that organic and inorganic waste is also a massive contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions? A zero-waste lifestyle keeps material out of landfills and reduces your carbon footprint. 

The benefits of recycling 

As climate change and waste are ever-growing problems worldwide, it is essential to understand how these two significant issues affect each other. Recycling helps combat the climate crisis by limiting the use of raw materials and reducing waste going into landfills.  

Project Drawdown estimates that recycling between 2020 and 2050 will reduce emissions by 5.5 to 6.02 gigatons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking over one billion cars off the streets for one year. Recycling is a practical yet easy change to help curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit the climate crisis. 

• When an item is recycled, it is processed and turned into something new rather than created out of virgin material or disposed of and treated as waste in a landfill.  
• Recycling to create something new generally uses less energy than creating a product from raw materials. 
• Recycling aluminum is incredibly energy efficient. Using aluminum scraps to make aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy used to create an aluminum can from raw materials. Producing 40 aluminum cans requires the amount of energy in one gallon of gasoline and can be significantly decreased by using recycled aluminum scraps.  
• The less energy used to produce a good, the fewer greenhouse gases are emitted in the process. This benefits climate change, as greenhouse gas emissions drive the current climate crisis. 

How to positively impact climate change through recycling 

You can make a difference in reducing climate change by making recycling an integral part of your lifestyle and routine. 

• Buy products made from recycled materials. This will support the market for recycled items and encourage the continued recycling of materials and the production of items made from recycled materials.  
• Recycle everything that you can. Learn what is recyclable.  
• Limit the number of disposable items you purchase in the first place to reduce the production of disposable items . 
• Swap out disposable items for reusable items . Switch to reusable water bottles, shopping bags, food storage containers and other reusable products. 

Upcycled vs. downcycled materials 

There are many pathways for recycled products. Turning an item into a new version of the same product is ideal when possible. Other options include turning the recycled material into new products. 

Upcycling turns a recycled material into something of equal or greater value or quality than the original product. Sometimes, the term upcycling refers to the reuse of an item instead of throwing it away. Upcycling lengthens the life of a given material. Industrial upcycling depends on the materials. Here are some easy-to-upcycle materials. 

• Paper: Recycled office paper is upcycled as new office paper. Paper is also downcycled and turned into toilet paper, paper towels and notebook paper, generally because of contamination and lack of adequate sorting. 
• Cardboard: Recycled cardboard may become new cardboard. When downcycled, it becomes paper bags, packaging or paperboard. 
• Metals: Recycled aluminum cans can become new aluminum cans, and recycled steel cans will turn into steel cans. When downcycled, metal can become bike or car parts, appliances, rebar and other metal products. 

Downcycling turns a product into a different product, but the cycle is not infinitely repeatable. An example of downcycling is when a plastic bottle gets turned into a fleece jacket. PET plastics, like soda bottles, are hard to recycle infinitely because when they become a new product, the plastic gets weaker each time. Virgin materials also often have to be added to the new product to account for the weakening that the recycling process causes.  

Some materials are challenging to upcycle or downcycle and often end up in landfills. However, you can repurpose some items to keep them out of landfills. Here are examples of materials that are hard to recycle. 

• Plastic bags: Plastic bags cannot be put in a regular recycling bin, making collection more complex. Also, the material used for plastic bags is generally hard to recycle. 
• Electronics: Electronics contain toxins such as lead and mercury, which can make them more dangerous to recycle. Collection is often an issue as curbside recycling companies don’t accept electronics. You must take electronics to a special facility for recycling.  
• Styrofoam (or polystyrene): Products made from Styrofoam are typically contaminated with food and have an incredibly low density. Because of this incredibly low density, it is not cost-effective to transport polystyrene because it takes up a lot of space and offers very little recyclable material. 

The climate impact of waste disposal 

Different types of waste impact the environment differently. However, all items placed in a landfill negatively impact the environment. 

• Organic waste decomposes and creates carbon dioxide and methane gas. Methane is produced when no air is present, while carbon dioxide is the natural product when anything rots in the air. 
• Inorganic waste includes products made from natural resources such as water, fuel, metal and timber, which causes greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide and other pollutants.  
• Plastic waste produces greenhouse gas emissions during every stage of its lifecycle. Plastic extraction and transportation depend on oil, gas and coal. The production and disposal of plastics release tons of carbon emissions.  

The waste management process, including transportation and incineration, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. 

Start recycling   

Recycling is easy in Boulder, both on campus and in the community. With plentiful recycling bins and curbside pickup, you can choose to live sustainably by recycling. You can learn more about ways to incorporate sustainable habits through the Environmental Center .  

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The 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

The 3 R’s stand for “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle”. This Eco Trio are rules that guide us to take care of our planet and use things wisely.

“Reducing” means using less , like using fewer plastic bottles or buying products with less packaging.  It’s about cutting down on waste from the start.

“Reduce” means not buying too many things in the first place. It’s about being mindful of using resources wisely so they don’t end up in a landfill .

For instance, bringing your own reusable coffee cup or water bottle is an example of “reducing”. By doing this, you help cut down on the need for single-use containers and reduce waste.

“Reusing” means using things again instead of throwing them away. There are a lot of creative ways that you can reuse anything in your household.

For example, you can reuse old cardboard boxes to create fun DIY projects or as storage containers. This not only saves money but also reduces the number of boxes that end up in the trash.

Another example of “reuse” is using an empty glass jar to store leftovers instead of throwing them away. This way, you give the jar a second life and reduce the need for new containers.

“Recycling” is the process of collecting and processing materials like paper, plastic, and glass so they can be turned into new products . It’s a way to give old items a new life instead of sending them to the landfill.

On average, over 69 million tons are recycled in the United States. Paper and cardboard make up about two-thirds of all the recycled things. Next, metals are around 13%. Finally, glass, plastic, and wood together are about 4 to 5%.

Food waste is still a significant problem. In the United States, 30-40% of all food produced is wasted . This is a big problem because it means throwing away good food and causing environmental issues. 

The 3 R’s Hierarchy

The order of the 3 R’s is not just about the spelling; it’s a strategic approach to sustainable waste management .

The 3 R’s hierarchy starts with “Reduce,” the best way to manage waste. Then comes “Reuse,” and lastly “Recycle.”

This hierarchy shows that it’s best to reduce and reuse items first. Recycling uses more energy and resources and has a bigger environmental impact. 

“Reduce” is the leader because it makes sure you don’t buy unnecessary items in the first place. Next, “reuse” is like a helpful sidekick because it’s when you use something more than once. Finally, “recycle” is like the hero who cleans up after a big mess.

Examples of the 3 R’s

The table below highlights some of the examples of applying the 3 R’s to everyday life.

So far, you’ve learned about the importance of the 3 R’s and how they can be helpful in reducing climate change . Here’s a recap of the 3 R’s:

By following the 3 R’s, we can protect the Earth , use things wisely, and make sure there’s enough for us and the generations that come after us.

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I think they’re gone to the recycling depot Kathryn 🙂

Hi, I accidentally dropped off some very important paper in the house station behind Best Buy. The papers relates to my home. How can I get that back?

this is very helpful to the earth

JK we need to save the earth by doing things like saving plastic bags and other things as well it could really help people and this earth.(help save the earth) every live counts and has to do its job to help

It is very cool.

This argument is explained very well! Congrats!

This website was so useful for my some work related to 3’rs.

Reading about “The 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” got me all pumped up about doing my part for the planet! The article brilliantly highlights how simple actions, like reducing waste, reusing stuff, and recycling, can make a huge impact. I’ve already started incorporating these practices into my daily routine, and it feels awesome. Kudos to the author for spreading the eco-friendly vibes! Let’s keep rocking those 3 R’s and make the world a greener, cleaner place.

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December 13, 2022

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Why All 3 R’s Are Critical to a Circular Economy

To create a sustainable economy, we need to revamp how we reduce, reuse and recycle products to create less waste

By Sarah King

Recycling could improve if changes are made to product design, manufacturing and collection infrastructure.

Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images

Evidence of the economic opportunities that a circular economy could bring is mounting. The potential environmental impact is also clear. The move to a circular economy—a system that aims to reduce, reuse and recycle materials—could address 70% of global greenhouse emissions. As the benefits stack up, this transition is becoming a key focus for policymakers around the world. But there remains much confusion about what a circular economy is, and how it might be achieved.

One common misunderstanding is the notion that it is simply a rebrand of recycling—the recovery and reprocessing of waste materials for use in new products. This perception is reinforced because recycling is the most common component of almost 80% of circular economy definitions. But, although recycling is an important element, there are many others. Before recycling comes into play there are several steps in a product’s life cycle that should be addressed, such as redesigning products and processes so that they use less virgin material, and re-using items rather than discarding them. New business models such as sharing and repairing can be adopted. These approaches prioritize smart designs that extend a product’s useful life, before reaching the stage of recycling. These steps are consistent with the central aim of a circular economy: to provide economic productivity by eliminating the concept of waste.

Recycling is often criticized as insufficient compared with earlier interventions such as reuse or reduce. And it is true that a circular economy requires a great deal more than recycling. But recycling remains a fundamental strategy to extract value from resources, as evidenced by its current contribution to 8.6% global circularity.

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To improve recycling rates, we need to recognize that the waste and resource recovery sector is positioned at the end of the supply chain, often known as end of life. This sector has limited influence over the materials and resources they collect. Recycling could improve if more effective changes are made upstream, such as in product design, material use, manufacturing, collection infrastructure and consumer behaviours.

Many countries, institutions and organizations need to increase resource recovery and shift away from the cheapest waste-management solutions such as landfill and incineration. This is a key barrier to realizing a circular economy. In Australia, there was significant disruption to recycling pathways in 2018 when, similarly to other high-income nations, the country could no longer export waste (including plastic and paper recycling) to China. This resulted in recycling being directed to landfill for a short period. For plastics alone, Australia required a 150% increase in domestic plastics-recycling capacity and this highlighted a need to adopt a range of circular economy strategies.

The transition to a circular economy will need further cross-sector collaboration and investment in initiatives that improve recovery rates while minimizing the consumption of raw materials, extending product life and increasing the use of renewable resources. An example is so-called right to repair legislation, which requires manufacturers to modify product design and make parts available to allow consumers to mend products. The right to repair is being adopted in Europe for electronic goods but could be applied to other products. Another example is the United Kingdom’s £200 (US$226) per tonne tax on plastic packaging that doesn’t include at least 30% recycled plastic. This approach is driving up market demand for recycled content and encourages companies to adopt recycled plastic solutions.

The Australian government has also implemented a waste export ban for key materials—including tyres, plastics, glass, paper and cardboard—and announced an investment of Aus$1 billion (roughly US$620 million) into infrastructure to enhance the country’s ability to recover and remanufacture waste materials. Product stewardship schemes, whether government mandated or voluntary, would require manufacturers and consumers to be responsible for a product throughout its life cycle, including its end-of-life stage. This initiative encourages companies to ensure their products can be recycled, such as by improving their design, or by implementing collection and recycling solutions if none already exists.

Ultimately, we need to break traditional boundaries between brand owners, manufacturers and those in the business of waste management and resource recovery, and instead stimulate collaborative partnerships. For example, nine companies joined forces to create a circular supply chain in which they captured soft plastic waste and converted it to a Nestlé KitKat wrapper using Australian-designed advanced recycling technology. This process converts waste plastic to food-grade plastic, in a continuous loop.

Innovation—on both the technological and societal fronts—is essential in the transition to a circular economy. Such shifts are needed to eliminate the concept of waste, by reducing consumption, and an increase in reuse and recycling. Local and global collaborations between government, industry, not-for-profit organizations and research agencies will help to address particularly nasty waste problems, such as plastics in the ocean.

It’s certainly true that a circular economy is much more than just recycling. But increased focus on this essential process is an effective strategy to achieve the larger goal.

This article is part of  Nature Outlook: Circular Economy , an editorially independent supplement produced with financial support from Google.  About this content .

News from the Columbia Climate School

Reduce. Reuse. And Then, When All Else Fails, Recycle.

Brynne Wilcox

A municipal waste worker turns away another shipment of recycled materials littered with greasy pizza boxes and broken glass, sentencing this waste to slow death in a landfill without a second thought.

As he does so, a woman speaks up in my presentation to visitors at Olympic National Park in upstate Washington, pleased with her efforts to protect the environment for future generations.

Full of pride, she describes her active role in the fight against climate change. She tells me she is doing her part. She recycles.

She is far from unique in this perspective. I have had countless conversations with self-proclaimed environmentalists who believe recycling is adequate action.

A 2016 study from the Pew Research Center showed recycling as a primary method of helping the environment through every day actions, with 63 percent of adults in the U.S. saying they have recycling bins at home, more than any other action presented in the study.

Modern recycling has become a part of life, but what happens when those plastic containers leave our curb?

The obvious answer is that it makes its way to a recycling facility, but this is too often not the case.

China, which had previously handled more than half of American recycling, closed its doors to our waste in 2017. Still, the U.S. continues to ship over one million tons of plastic waste overseas, according to an investigation published by The Guardian in 2019 .

Moreover, between 20 and 70 percent of this plastic is discarded because it is contaminated or otherwise unusable, condemning this waste to landfills where it will remain long after you, or I, or any of our children are gone. The wide range in the estimates of how many recyclables actually end up in landfills is but one indicator of how little we really understand about the true environmental impact of commercial recycling.

Likely the woman from my presentation didn’t know this, or maybe she didn’t care.

Certainly, our society has a waste problem, as seen in overflowing landfills and islands of trash in our oceans. In its current capacity, recycling is not an adequate solution to this problem. Refocusing on waste prevention and reuse could more effectively prevent these piles of trash from continuing to grow, but how can we foster this change?

By the time the slogan, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” was popularized in the 1970s , our consumerist economy was in full swing. Manufacturers couldn’t afford to have people buying less by reducing purchases and reusing products, and people weren’t interested in reducing their consumption. While recycling should have been the last resort, people began to consider it the singular solution to our waste problem. The image of three green arrows became a symbol for commercial recycling, and ideas of reducing and reusing were quickly forgotten.

Reduction and reuse are not modern notions. Until the late 19th century, families used old fabrics for new clothes or blankets and repaired their own furniture, and whatever they couldn’t use was reclaimed by merchants who could. Historian Susan Strasser has described how this form of recycling was a part of life long before commercial recycling was even comprehensible, and this approach resulted in the generation of very little waste in general.

During the advent of the Industrial Revolution, waste became a notable problem, and recycling became important in a new way. Where earlier forms of recycling were born in response to limited materials and thin wallets, modern recycling was a solution to unmanageable amounts of waste.

If the 63 percent of American adults who recycle at home practiced 19th-century recycling instead, emphasizing reduction and reuse, the impact on industry would be shocking. Repurposing and repairing wearing clothing, finding reusable alternatives to household products and packaging, and reducing consumption of disposable items where we can, could change the way our society thinks about waste.

There are barriers to these practices, like a lack of accessibility and affordability stemming from high prices of sustainable products or product repairs, especially in comparison to the affordable nature of cheap, disposable products. With increased demand and improved regulation of the lifespan of products from production to disposal, there is hope for this to improve in time.

Regulatory frameworks could include subsidies for reusable or compostable single-use materials, tax penalties for single use plastic production, other incentives for durable products, or plenty more creative solutions.

Our environmental problems run much deeper than waste, with greenhouse gas emissions creating a dangerously unstable climate. This being said, with reduced energy use in manufacturing and shipping, reduction and reuse can go further in alleviating these problems than recycling alone could.

I’m not blaming the virtue-signaling woman who spoke up in my program, or telling you to stop recycling. In fact, I commend her efforts, and hope that you recycle better, avoiding contaminated materials in your own curbside bin.

Emphasizing reduction and reuse can do so much more to manage waste, though. Pushing for governmental regulation to pressure major waste-producing industries can go even further. Successful plastic bag bans around the world are a great example of where to start. Next, we must look to other single-use products and waste sources to continue this momentum.

Brynne Wilcox is a graduate student in Columbia Climate School’s M.A. in Climate and Society program.

Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Columbia Climate School, Earth Institute or Columbia University.

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Most of All, Reduce.

Try incorporating these small tweaks into your routine. You’ll throw out less trash, and help fight climate change at the same time.

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About 4.5 pounds. That’s the amount of trash—banana peels, frayed toothbrushes, busted electronics, plastic wrappers, greasy pizza boxes—that the average American generates every day. And it adds up quickly: In 2014 alone, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent available data, we collectively tossed 258.5 million tons of stuff.

Fortunately, not all the items we discard end up in landfills; we recycle or compost more than one-third of our trash. In 2014 this saved carbon emissions equivalent to the yearly output of 38 million passenger cars . But we could be doing so much more. For example, we recycle only 14 percent of all plastic packaging. And we toss about 40 percent of all our food , composting only about 5 percent of that load, according to the EPA.

Although even recycling comes with environmental costs, NRDC’s Senior Resource Specialist Darby Hoover says that “compared to landfilling, recycling is the clear environmental winner. However, waste prevention is even better.” So start by cutting down on what you use in the first place. “ Reduce should always be the number-one priority,” Hoover says.

How? Think more conscientiously about your everyday habits and develop new routines. Here are some places where you can start.

Buy well-made products, and borrow the items that you rarely use.

When you purchase long-lasting clothes , housewares, and electronics, you’ll trash them less often. Even better, when possible, borrow or buy used goods. Tap friends, neighbors, consignment shops, garage sales, flea markets, and secondhand e-commerce sites first—especially for things like Halloween costumes or that power washer you’ll use just once or twice. If you have kids, always say yes to hand-me-downs. And as items are outgrown, pass them on or resell them.

Before you purchase anything, ask: Is this (say, a garlic press) a thing I need? Or is there another item I can use or repurpose for the same task (like that kitchen knife)? Get creative. Need wrapping paper? Use pages torn from catalogs, the Sunday comics, or even an old road atlas. “People love when I wrap presents in maps,” Hoover says.

Cut plastic and single-use items out of your daily routine.

So many of our everyday products are designed to have a short useful life. Here are some ideas for more sustainable swaps.

Health and beauty products

• Choose a toothbrush with a replaceable head to avoid having to throw out the handle each time you need a new one.
• Invest in a reusable metal razor with a replaceable, recyclable head. (Back in 1990, the EPA estimated Americans tossed two billion disposable razors. And our population has grown by about 75 million people since then.)
• Swap your facial wipes for a reusable washcloth.
• Buy hair-care products and soaps in economy sizes and decant them to smaller, reusable containers when needed. (The same goes for laundry detergent and cleaning products. Also, look for options sold in concentrate.)

Kitchen basics

• Ditch the plastic wrap, small plastic bags, and aluminum foil when possible. Instead, opt for reusable food containers, washable fabric pouches (great for dry nibbles like popcorn and nuts), and reusable food wraps.
• Stock up on washable towels and cloth napkins instead of paper towels and napkins.
• Drink tap water instead of bottled (purchase a water filter if needed). If you love fizzy water, invest in a seltzer maker with reusable bottles.
• Save plastic grocery bags or other plastic packaging to reuse for another purpose, like lining small garbage pails or picking up after your dog.
• Avoid dishwasher tablets or other products, like sponges, that come individually wrapped.

On-the-go accessories

• Purchase a reusable garment bag, and ask your dry cleaner to use that instead of plastic clothing covers.
• Carry reusable, BPA-free water bottles and reusable coffee mugs.
• Get stainless steel or other reusable straws for your smoothies and iced coffee. Plastic straws are not typically recyclable; in some places, their use may soon be limited .
• Keep a set of reusable cutlery where you work for use during lunch breaks.
• Carry lightweight reusable bags—or keep a set in your car—to replace plastic shopping bags .

Slay food waste—and food-packaging waste.

On average, Americans toss out a staggering 400 pounds of food per person every year . Most of it ends up in a landfill, where it releases methane, a potent contributor to climate change. We also have to consider all the greenhouse gases released by growing the food we ultimately chuck. All told, our wasted food produces more greenhouse gas emissions each year than 37 million cars. And that’s not our only wasteful food-related habit. We also tend to prefer our food in convenient, single-serving sizes, shrink-wrapped or accompanied by lots of plastic accessories. Commit to freezing more and wasting less , getting more out of your kitchen stash , and calming your impulse to dump anything in your fridge that isn’t super-fresh . Follow these tips for reducing your food packaging, too.

• Coffee or tea time: Use a reusable filter in your coffeemaker and store any extra brew in the fridge for iced coffee or in the freezer for coffee ice cubes. (Check out lots more planet-friendly coffee tips here .) If you’re more of a tea fan, start brewing with loose-leaf tea instead of tea bags, many of which contain plastic and most of which end up in landfills.
• Eating (or taking) out: If you’re likely to take home leftovers from a restaurant, bring a reusable container from home rather than asking your server to box up the rest of your meal in something disposable. And when you’re ordering takeout, ask the restaurant to leave out any disposable utensils, plates, stacks of napkins, and packages of condiments you won’t need.
• Grocery runs: Shop from bulk bins for flour, nuts, dried fruit, cereal, beans, rice, and other staples. Take lightweight mesh bags for produce. And for packaged food favorites—pretzels, crackers, cheese—forgo snack packs and buy the largest size you know you will eat before it spoils. (The same rule of thumb applies for purchasing pet food and treats.)

Recycle and compost all you can—and do it correctly.

To reap the environmental benefits of “recyclable” and “compostable” goods, you must recycle and compost according to the rules of your municipality, since systems vary widely by location . If you don’t, you’ll have regular ol’ trash on your hands. Search your municipality’s sanitation department (or equivalent) web page to learn exactly what you can place in the recycling bin, as counties and cities often differ in what they accept. And if municipal or community composting isn’t available where you live, consider doing it in your own backyard.

Speaking of the yard, in 2014 Americans contributed 34.5 million tons of yard trimmings—grass, brush, and leaves—to the waste stream. Do your part to reduce that amount by composting those trimmings, leaving grass clippings on the ground where they can decompose into a natural fertilizer, or joining the no-mow movement .

And make a habit of recycling everywhere. Designate a spot in your closet to collect clothing to donate. If you have a home office, station a paper recycling bin right by your desk, and set up a box for other recyclable items like batteries and printer cartridges. When it’s time to part with old electronics, look for e-waste drop-off sites or events where you can hand over your discards to an e-Stewards -certified company, or find out if your town offers a municipal e-waste collection program.

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• 16 November 2022

Recycling our way to sustainability

• Sarah King 0

Sarah King is a circular economy researcher at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Evidence of the economic opportunities that a circular economy could bring is mounting. The potential environmental impact is also clear. The move to a circular economy — a system that aims to reduce, reuse and recycle materials — could address 70% of global greenhouse emissions 1 . As the benefits stack up, this transition is becoming a key focus for policymakers around the world. But there remains much confusion about what a circular economy is, and how it might be achieved.

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Nature 611 , S7 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03646-z

This article is part of Nature Outlook: The circular economy , an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content .

Circle Economy. The Circularity Gap Report 2022 1–64 (2022).

Kirchherr, J., Reike, D. & Hekkert, M. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 127 , 221–232 (2017).

Article   Google Scholar  

Kadner, S. et al. Circular Economy Roadmap for Germany (Circular Economy Initiative Deutschland, 2021).

Google Scholar  

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Recycling and Climate Change Educator Guide

This Guide for Educators was developed by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative as an extension of our TILclimate (Today I Learned: Climate) podcast, to make it easier for you to teach climate change, earth science, and energy topics in the classroom. It is an extension of the TILclimate episode " TIL about recycling ."

Browse all TILclimate guides for educators .

Description

We often hear about the “Three Rs” of environmental solutions, but how does recycling help climate change? Students engage in a design challenge, research recycling in their own community, and investigate US municipal solid waste data.

• Brainstorm and investigate solutions beyond ‘just recycle more’.
• Explain the link between recycling and climate change.
• Understand where recycling in their own community goes.
• Design Process
• Communication
• Graph and data reading
• HS-ESS3-2 Evaluate competing design solutions for developing, managing, and utilizing energy and mineral resources.
• HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems. 
• HS-ETS1-2 Design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering.
• HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
• WHST.9-12.7 Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question or solve a problem.
• SL.11-12.5 Make strategic use of digital in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Disciplinary Core Ideas:

• ESS2.D Weather and Climate
• ESS3.C Human Impacts on Earth Systems
• ESS3.D Global Climate Change
• ETS1.A Defining and Delimiting an Engineering Problem
• ETS1.B Developing Possible Solutions

What is included in this Educator Guide

• How to use TILclimate Educator Guides ( Download )  
• Includes both Teacher and Student pages  
• Includes materials, discussion questions, background resources, and adaptation suggestions for science, social science, and ELA teachers  
• Communication Challenge: Recycling
• Investigation: Recycling in My Community
• Listening Exercise: Recycling Problems and Solutions
• Group Project: Recycling Solutions
• Data Exploration: Solid Waste
• Reading: Solutions Sorting

Listen to the episode

Browse all tilclimate guides for educators.

Related Educator Guides

Methane and climate change educator guide, america's big year of climate action educator guide, carbon offsets and climate change educator guide, adaptation and climate change costs educator guide, mit climate news in your inbox.

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Reduce Reuse Recycle Essay

Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse are the three R's, which means people must decrease their trash production, recycle as much scrap as possible, and reuse it. This will eventually enable us to reduce overall scrap output and protect the environment. One of the most effective waste management strategies is recycling, which is crucial for sustainable living. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse’.

100 Words Essay On Reduce Reuse Recycle

Reducing | Individuals must aim to concentrate on reducing their consumption of the items that they can. For instance, you may fix your old garments or purchase used ones instead of buying brand-new clothing.

Reusing | This is when you find a new use for the items you will toss away. Old t-shirts, for instance, can be made into mops. Food can be kept in the refrigerator in reused containers. You can store additional liquids or beverages in used bottles.

Recycling | This takes place when there is recycling of existing trash. Therefore, decreasing and reusing are more efficient since they don't add to the junk buildup. In recycling, raw elements from already-existing rubbish are found and used to create something new. This may lessen waste, but it might only partially remove it.

200 Words Essay On Reduce Reuse Recycle

Pollution levels have started to rise swiftly. The usage of plastics and other non-biodegradable materials has only made matters worse. Reducing the use of such items and recycling and reusing them are ways to combat this. Thus, the idea of "reduce, reuse, recycle" has gained popularity on a global scale.

Recycling is an environmentally friendly method of converting trash and waste into usable products. It is a preventative approach to stop the demolition of things that might be valuable. Additionally, it aids in lowering the consumption of fresh raw materials, energy, and natural resources. Recycling includes composting or reusing biodegradable trash, such as food scraps, kitchen garbage, and garden waste.

As a result, less rubbish is produced, significant environmental resources are preserved, environmental contamination is reduced, and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. Hence, despite rising demands, our ecosystem is carefully cared for and conserved. Plastic, paper, glass, metal, tyres, electronics, and textiles are a few examples of recyclable materials used daily.

Another eco-friendly method of conserving resources and energy and innovatively reusing products in the future is through reuse. Additionally, it eases the strain on industrial production, resulting in less industrial pollution—both the prices and requirements for disposal decrease simultaneously. In addition to its positive effects on the environment, recycling is a cost-effective strategy for both businesses and consumers because it is more affordable than buying new goods. Reusing is the best approach to conserving energy and cutting the cost of producing all goods and materials.

500 Words Essay On Reduce Reuse Recycle

The three R's should always be in your mind when trying to protect the environment. The three R's are essential for directing us on how to approach protecting the planet. Daily waste production by humans is enormous and continues to increase. The "Three Rs" are a more systematic method of managing waste in an environmentally beneficial way.

The most important way to reduce waste is to reduce spending. The secret is only to buy the things we need in the proper quantity. We wouldn't need to extract raw materials, create items from scratch, develop packaging, use more resources for shipping, and then figure out how to get rid of them if we never produced them in the first place.

How To Practice The Principle Of Reduce

Shopping For Premium Good | High-quality goods may cost more but also perform better and cause fewer issues than inferior goods. Invest in long-lasting products like silverware, reusable cups, and reusable water bottles rather than disposables.

Using Minimal Packaging | Plastic bags, boxes, packing peanuts, and plastic wrappers are among the packaging materials that frequently end up in landfills. Bring your bags so you won't have to rely on plastic ones. Use paper bags rather than plastic ones if you don't have any shopping bags because they degrade more quickly. Reusable bags are frequently available at the register; some shops even provide customers with discarded plastic bags.

Purchasing Regional Good | By supporting local businesses, we can limit the negative impacts of transportation on the environment.

The idea behind recycling is that the used materials in our lives can be repurposed as resources rather than waste. If we take a close look at the things we discard, we can learn to recognise them as resources that can be used to meet daily needs and solve issues. You can start brainstorming and coming up with ideas once you've decided to use waste for good. Reusing reduces costs, saves resources, and satisfies the creative drive in people.

How To Practice The Principle Of Reuse

You can use old towels and sheets torn into little pieces as dust rags.

When you go shopping, bring a reusable tote bag or bags with you to the store.

Old tyres can be used in the play area and garden.

Reuse cardboard boxes, plastic bags, wrapping paper, and lumber.

Purchase drinks in reusable containers.

Donate broken appliances to a local vocational school or charity so students can practice repairing them or utilise them in art workshops.

Recycling is gathering and processing materials (such as bottles and cans) that would otherwise be thrown away to transform them into something fresh and beneficial. Recycling is essential for maintaining a clean environment and local communities. We lessen our influence on nature by employing recycled materials to create new products.

How To Practice The Principle Of Recycle

Glass | Glass is broken down into fragments called "Cullet" not wider than 5 cm. Glass fragments are separated by colour. Silica, which is melted down and shaped into new goods, is used to make glass.

Plastics | Polyethylene terephthalate, high-density polyethene, polyvinyl chloride, low-density polyethene, polypropylene, and polystyrene are the six chemicals that makeup plastic. The physical characteristics of each plastic are determined by its molecular structure, which makes some plastics easier to recycle than others. Large carbon chains make up plastic; therefore, some types can be melted down and reformed, others can be combined with new plastic, and yet others can only be molded into different shapes for various applications.

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Reduce, reuse and recycle: The “three Rs” to help the planet

Last update: 16/02/2022

Every 60 seconds, about a million drinks (mainly in plastic containers) are sold worldwide. That massive amount plus the other things that come in plastic add up to more than 350 million tonnes a year. Reducing, reusing and recycling plastic is key in countering the devastation wreaked by climate change . 

Plastics are a major source of pollution on Earth . Unbridled manufacturing and low recycling rates of plastic products threaten our planet. Despite heightened awareness about recycling, we’re still far from turning things around. 

Our oceans alone hold more than 8 million tonnes that come out of rivers. The United Nations warns that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050 if we don’t take forceful action against the devastation it’s causing to our planet. 

Reduce, reuse and recycle to fight climate change

A plastic bottle is estimated to take about 1,000 years to decompose (or 450 years if it’s left outside). Consumers play an important role in reducing pollution. Following the “three Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) is a way to do it. 

• Reduce : we can take this primary step when using water, electricity or gas (e.g., switching off devices or turning off the tap when we're not using them), or even when selecting items at the supermarket (e.g., products from close to where we live waste less on transport).
• Recycle: we can do this simple act by sorting waste into specific containers.  Processing recycled waste properly not only reduces gases and toxic waste, but also leads to new manufactured products. 
• Reuse : this is when we repurpose things for a “second life”, like turning glass food jars into pen holders or old clothes into dust rags. 

Our environmental duty

At Santander, we’re serious about sustainability . We're aiding our customers’ transition towards a green economy , and our Group and subsidiaries have eco-friendly initiatives across our footprint. 

of our energy from clean sources by 2025

single-use plastic at our branches by 2021

At Santander Argentina , we’re working with co-ops to process waste from our main offices and branches in towns with recycling systems. Read more in this article (in Spanish) by Santander Post .

In Spain , in 2019 we became the first bank to receive “Zero waste” certification from AENOR for waste management and employee awareness measures at the Santander Group City , for which as much as 90% of the waste we make goes back into the value chain.

Our Group's milestones include carbon-neutrality in all operations and, this year, we’re working on eliminating unnecessary single-use plastic at our branches. Other goals we've set for ourselves are sourcing electricity entirely from renewable resources by 2025 and achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  

Lamentablemente, no podemos ofrecerte este contenido en el idioma seleccionado. Si lo prefieres, puedes seguir consultando esta información en el idioma disponible, o por el contrario, ir a la página de inicio.

How Useful Is Recycling, Really?

Among all possible climate actions, recycling ranks pretty low in its impact.

One of the few things Americans largely agree on is recycling. This simple act is popular with Democrats, Republicans, free-market diehards, and environmental advocates alike, data consistently show. And among recycling enthusiasts, one group is particularly keen—people already concerned about climate change.

This makes a certain intuitive sense, as recycling has well-documented benefits for the planet and can reduce carbon emissions. Still, as climate actions go, even the most committed recyclers caution that this one has clear limits.

“There are a lot of climate benefits to bolstering the recycling system,” Beth Porter, the author of Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine: Sorting Out the Recycling System , told me. “But we also have to acknowledge that recycling is not among the highest-priority actions.”

Recycling does have value. It is one of the easier climate-friendly acts individuals can undertake, and it reduces the extraction of virgin materials. “Any time you use renewable resources, or secondary resources, there’s less carbon emitted than if you use primary resources,” Adam Minter, the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade , an insider’s account of the international recycling business, told me.

Read: Is this the end of recycling?

Despite the carbon involved in collection, transport, and processing, recycled aluminum, for example, is about 95 percent less energy-intensive to forge than its raw alternative. Project Drawdown, a nonprofit group that conducts reviews of climate solutions, includes recycling in its recommendations for reining in emissions. But when the group analyzed more than 80 separate means that could help keep the world from passing the oft-cited threshold of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the recycling industry ’s projected contributions fell below the median, trailing geothermal power, efficient aviation, forest protection, and dozens of other actions.

Project Drawdown’s list centers on strategies that are feasible to adopt and have room for growth within the existing market. It gives more weight to solutions such as onshore wind turbines for that reason. The recommendations also account for recycling’s tricky relationship with waste reduction—on its face, waste reduction alone saves much more in emissions. If 1 million metric tons of waste are landfilled, direct emissions equal about 274,000 tons of CO 2 -equivalent, Miranda Gorman, a senior fellow with the group, explained to me. Not sending items for disposal avoids creating those emissions. Recycling is more complex, because the process itself consumes energy and resources. But it still reduces the use of virgin feedstocks, which Project Drawdown estimates can save up to an additional 2 million tons of CO 2 -equivalent. Both are ultimately needed, the group says.

“We analyze the impact of the integrated system as a whole, and all of the solutions are interconnected,” Gorman said.

Read: The dangerous pile-up of artificial turf

For recycling to truly make an impact, however, it needs to be more effective. In 2018, national rates had dipped to 32 percent of total municipal waste, according to the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—out of almost 300 million tons of waste generated that year, only 69 million tons were recycled. Paper and paperboard are among the more recycled materials, while glass has stagnated at about 25 percent. Plastics recycling rates remain under 10 percent.

Americans might want to recycle, but a constant influx of new and hard-to-manage materials in the waste stream poses ongoing problems for facilities with aging infrastructure. This can be compounded by a lack of education and standardization: Recycling programs differ wildly, and people are often so enthusiastic about recycling, they toss items into a bin without verifying that they can, in fact, be recycled.

That last problem is sometimes called “wish-cycling.” If a municipal program receives a particular item that it cannot accept, it is subsequently hauled elsewhere for disposal, creating emissions and contributing to the waste stream. Such practices, Minter noted, underscore the gap between the public’s good intentions and recycling’s real capacity.

“People just really want a way out of their consumption that doesn’t make them feel bad,” he said.

But recycling does ultimately play a role in emissions reduction, and in recent years the industry, too, has leaned into its clear climate benefits.

“Landfills create methane, a serious climate bad actor, and the less that goes into the landfill, the better,” Keefe Harrison, the CEO of The Recycling Partnership (TRP), told me. “From a system point of view, recycling protects the climate by keeping natural habitats in place, limiting the need for carbon-intensive harvesting of virgin natural resources.”

Read: A new way of thinking about climate change

A national nonprofit, TRP focuses on building public-private partnerships to boost recycling, powered by a group of funders, including Coca-Cola, the American Chemistry Council, and Burt’s Bees. Like others in the space, TRP’s message often centers on “circularity” and the idea of an economy that operates in a renewing cycle rather than on a linear path that culminates in disposal.

Climate change is a key part of that message. Since its beginning in 2014, Harrison said, TRP's work has helped prevent the emission of about 251,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, in addition to diverting more than 230 million tons of recyclables from landfills. And the group thinks that more emissions reductions are possible: In a 2020 report , TRP found that only about half of Americans have access to curbside pickup, and that many who do have access don’t fully participate.

That has led to the inverse of wish-cycling—items are being thrown away that could be recycled. Curbside recycling currently recovers only about 32 percent of what is available in single-family homes, according to TRP. If the remainder were recycled each year, based on calculations through the EPA’s Waste Reduction Model , which determines emissions savings stemming from waste-management practices, TRP has found that "would also reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 96 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent," Harrison said.

Although industry forces see recycling as a key climate tool, others are more skeptical, including Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and founder of the Last Beach Cleanup. The chief focus of her criticism is a common one: plastics.

“Companies actively use recycling as a distraction and an excuse,” Dell told me. She sees many corporate recycling pledges as a means of evading actual climate action.

Environmental advocates maintain that plastics are largely single-use: A 2020 Greenpeace USA survey found that plastics with resin codes #3–7 are virtually impossible to recycle, because of limited facility processing capabilities and insufficient market demand. Lawsuits are currently ongoing against Walmart and Keurig Green Mountain , arguing that those companies have violated Federal Trade Commission guidance by presenting plastic items as recyclable. The corporate giants have defended themselves against the allegations and emphasized their commitment to sustainability. (Walmart said in a statement that the company is “a strong advocate for the environment” and recycling, while Keurig has maintained in court that its labels advise consumers to “check locally” regarding recycling options.)

Other industry groups and corporations have also strongly disputed Greenpeace’s report and broader thesis. Some are members of the U.S. Plastics Pact , a large-scale voluntary effort driven by TRP and other groups that aims to achieve 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging by 2025, among several other goals. Their focus is creating a market for plastics that keeps them in circulation, rather than dooming them to disposal.

Critics say focusing on getting hard-to-recycle materials out of the recycling system altogether would do more to curb climate and environmental issues. Dell suggested going back to “core four” recyclables (cardboard, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and aluminum cans), since items such as plastic film and bags are notorious for burdening recycling facilities. But she also cited the Jevons paradox, the economic idea that increasing the efficiency of a resource’s use also increases its consumption. Rather than prioritizing fixing recycling, she said, people should place greater emphasis on scaling back their waste to begin with.

Others agree that a reliance on mass-producing virgin materials poses a far bigger climate threat than limited recycling access, or habits such as wish-cycling. Minter said that some Western countries could benefit from looking to other parts of the world where, by economic necessity, people have formed better habits around recirculating resources. Porter, too, worries that recycling can perpetuate consumption and waste. A reliance on recycling, she said, can draw attention away from prioritizing “reduce and reuse,” which do far more to lower emissions.

“I don't want people to think that what they do as an individual doesn’t matter,” she said, but added that “we won't recycle our way out of this crisis.”

That doesn't mean giving up on recycling; instead, Porter advised thinking of it as a key part of materials-management efforts, rather than a singular solution to climate change. In essence, people should keep their enthusiasm for recycling alive and active—but they shouldn’t stop there.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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Take Action: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

In  Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle , we’re exploring  Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences , which summarizes the most important principles and concepts of climate science. In addition to the seven essential principles, the document also includes the  Guiding Principle for Informed Climate Decisions. It states:

Humans can take actions to reduce climate change and its impacts .

How can elementary teachers incorporate this guiding principle into their classroom? An emerging best practice from climate research is that teachers are better able to avoid overwhelming students, transcend boredom, and engage students by weaving science content with solutions.  In this column, we help you and your students make the connection between knowledge and action.

In this issue, we focus on  Essential Principle 5: Our understanding of the climate systems is improved through observations, theoretical studies, and modeling.  Unlike columns in past issues , in this column there isn’t an obvious connection to an action that students can take to reduce climate change. So instead, we’ve chosen to highlight three simple actions that can have great impact: reducing, reusing, and recycling.

The answer is that manufacturing products, transporting them for sale, and managing the resulting waste all require energy, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, logging forests for paper and other products made from wood removes an important means of carbon sequestration . Reducing the amounts of products we use by purchasing less, using an item as many times as possible, and recycling items when they are no longer usable will decrease the number of products manufactured, resources consumed, and greenhouse gases emitted.

In the past, of the 3Rs  recycling has received the most emphasis. Many of us recycle at home, at school or the office, and even in airports and at sporting events. While recycling is important and should be encouraged, reducing our use of products and reusing what we do have are even more important. Be creative! There are many ways to reuse items that we would normally consider to be trash, and to repurpose items commonly found around your home.

Many of these tips can be applied to the classroom. Empty jars and containers can hold pencils. Create a paper bin so that students can reuse backs of papers for scratch paper, drawing, or coloring. (Once both sides have been used, the paper can be recycled). Old socks make great erasers for white boards. Creating a classroom environment where the 3Rs are put into practice provides a strong model for students’ own behavior.

Another practice, termed “upcycling,” refers to the process of taking products that would normally be thrown out and turning them into something of greater value. The extent of upcycling seems to be limited only by one’s creativity. Handbags are made out of juice packs or soda cans. Scrabble tiles are turned into jewelry. Old sweaters are made into coin purses. The list goes on and on! You can introduce your students to upcycling by using a variety of “trash” objects (styrofoam meat trays, egg cartons, toilet paper tubes, magazines) to create art projects.

When you are engaged in recycling or upcycling activities with your students, take the time to explicitly talk about why these kinds of activities are important. You don’t need to discuss climate change in detail to do so. Instead, you can keep the conversation focused on saving resources – a more age-appropriate topic for elementary students. Encourage students to identify ways that the 3Rs can be applied in their classrooms, schools, homes, and communities, and help them act on their ideas. You’ll not only teach science content but also empower students to make a difference.

A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change This web site for students in grade 3 and up is divided into four sections: Learn the Basics, See the Impacts, Think Like a Scientist, and Be Part of the Solution. One of the suggested solutions is to reduce waste , which explores how the 3Rs are connected to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trash and Climate Change Activity Book This downloadable PDF includes passages, crossword puzzles, math activities and more – all designed to help students think about reducing climate change by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Best for students in grade 3 and up. From the Kids’ Activities page of the EPA Climate Change web site.

Up-Cycle Your Arts and Crafts for Earth Day This site provides ideas for taking something disposable and transforming it into something useful and lovely. Look around your home and you’re sure to find plenty of objects you can use.

This article was written by Jessica Fries-Gaither. Jessica is an education resource specialist at The Ohio State University and project director of Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle and  Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears . She has taught in elementary and middle school settings. Email Jessica at  [email protected] .

Copyright September 2011 – The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1034922. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This work is licensed under an  Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license .

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A student's guide to Global Climate Change

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Reduce Waste

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Most people don't realize that reducing, reusing, and recycling can help slow climate change. How? To begin with, every product has a life cycle, and every step—from manufacturing to disposal—leads to greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing, reusing, and recycling means you buy (and throw away) less stuff, and that helps reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we're adding to the atmosphere. Learn more about product life cycles . ( Alternative version )

You can reduce greenhouse gas emissions if you:

• Reduce. Reduce the amount of new stuff you buy. To reduce waste, buy things that have less packaging.
• Reuse. Try to borrow or rent things you'll only need for a short amount of time, and reuse the things you already have. When you have things you no longer need, give them to others who can use them. Use reusable bags when you go shopping.
• Recycle. Remember to recycle whatever materials you can, like bottles, cans, and paper, so they can be collected and remade into new products.
• Buy recycled. Choose products made from recycled materials whenever you can.
• Teach your school the three R's. Schools can save energy, preserve natural resources, and prevent greenhouse gas emissions by reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Learn more about ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle at school . ( Alternative version )

The Life Cycle of a Product

Every product you use goes through a life cycle:

• Raw materials (like trees, metals, and oil) are harvested or extracted from the Earth.
• Raw materials are transported and processed in a factory.
• The materials are used to manufacture and package a product.
• The product is transported to a distribution center or warehouse.
• The product is transferred to a store.

Every one of these steps uses energy and creates greenhouse gases. So does disposing of products when you're done with them. The trucks that pick up your trash have to burn fuel, which produces greenhouse gases. In some parts of the country, trash ends up getting burned (often to produce energy), which also produces greenhouse gases. Landfills also emit greenhouse gases—particularly methane and carbon dioxide—which are given off by decomposing waste.

Learn how much energy is used and how much waste material is created for each cell phone (PDF) (2 pp, 651K, About PDF ) , CD or DVD (PDF) (2 pp, 413K) , and soccer ball (PDF) (2 pp, 4.28MB) that you buy.

The Three R's

Schools can set an example for the whole community by reducing the amount of waste they produce.

To reduce the amount of materials used, your school can...

• Have students view information on a computer screen or projector instead of printing paper copies.
• Purchase supplies that come in as little packaging as possible.
• Host “waste–free” lunch days. See https://www.epa.gov/osw/education/lunch.htm for more information.

To reuse things instead of throwing them away, your school can...

• Set up boxes to collect scrap paper that has only been used on one side.
• Always print, copy, and write on both sides of a piece of paper.
• Create a school exchange where students can share supplies they no longer need with one another.

To promote recycling , your school can...

• Start or expand a recycling program.
• Contact community officials or a local recycling center to find out which items they will accept.
• Provide containers for collecting items like paper, bottles, cans, electronic equipment, and batteries.
• Keep track of how much is recycled.
• Hold a recycling competition.
• Start a volunteer program that picks up recyclables in parks or apartment buildings.

Check out these resources for more help:

• Reuse+Recycling=Waste Reduction: A Guide for Schools & Groups (PDF) (32 pp, 1.6MB, About PDF )
• Make a Difference in Your School: A How–to Guide for Engaging Students in Resource Conservation and Waste Reduction (PDF) (34 pp, 1.59MB)

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How You Can Help the Climate This Earth Day

Thursday: Reducing and recycling can still go a long way. Plus, a surprising pandemic shortage.

By Priya Arora and Jill Cowan

Good morning.

Happy Earth Day! President Biden has set a new climate target for the U.S.: to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The target would require Americans to transform the way they drive, heat their homes and manufacture goods.

The announcement came this morning at a virtual global summit Mr. Biden is hosting, which is aimed at sending a message that the United States is rejoining international efforts to fight global warming after a four-year absence under the Trump administration.

“If America fails to lead the world on addressing the climate crisis, we won’t have much of a world left,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned on Monday .

California is already experiencing many of climate change’s most acute effects , and though what that looks like varies by region, the impacts have been felt statewide. (Select your hometown and birth year in this model from 2017 to see how much hotter your city is now, compared with when you were born.)

Here are some ways you can help battle climate change on this Earth Day — and every day.

Nearly every bottle or can you use can be recycled, and you don’t need to wash or crush them. You can use curbside bins, or visit any of the more than 1,500 recycling centers across the state that offer cash refunds, or California redemption value.

Reduce waste

Limiting your use of plastic, disposable items like bottles and utensils can help reduce waste, as does using reusable bags. CalRecycle , an agency that joins the state’s recycling and waste management programs, also recommends composting, which can help “by reducing organic materials disposed in landfills where they form methane.” (Landfills are among the largest sources of man-made methane.)

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Don’t forget to reduce, reuse —

Does paper recycling benefit the climate it depends, the paper industry is around 1% of emissions, but it needs help to go lower..

Scott K. Johnson - Oct 21, 2020 5:24 pm UTC

For many people, the most familiar way to “go green” or “be eco-friendly” is probably paper recycling. (And perhaps its aging office cousin: “ Consider a tree before you print this email. ”) There are many ways to evaluate the environmental benefits of such actions, and one of those is greenhouse gas emissions. So how does paper recycling stack up in this regard?

That’s a more interesting question than it may seem, namely because of the way paper products are made. Processing pulp to make paper is typically powered by “ black liquor ”—a byproduct organic sludge with some useful properties. Burning it for heat and electricity to run the mill is approximately carbon neutral, since the carbon you emit into the air started out in the air (before a temporary stint as tree stuff). So if your recycling process generates CO 2 as it makes new paper, recycling could end up increasing emissions.

A new study led by Stijn van Ewijk at Yale University tries to do the math on this, using practical scenarios for the next few decades. Namely, they calculate whether increasing paper recycling would make it easier or harder to hit emissions targets that would halt global warming at 2°C.

The researchers start by projecting growing global paper demand, driven especially by less-wealthy nations increasing their use of packaging. They then feed this into three scenarios applied to each step of the paper life cycle. One scenario continues current trends in things like energy mix and landfill management, while the other two represent more aggressive efforts to clean up electric grids and reduce emissions. These future scenarios, which go out to 2050, include a doubling in the share of paper that gets recycled.

Let’s start with 2012

For a baseline, they estimated global emissions associated with paper for 2012. This includes emissions from the energy used for harvesting wood, producing paper, manufacturing paper products, recycling paper, and disposing of paper in landfills (which can emit greenhouse gasses) or incineration plants. That finds that the paper life cycle actually accounted for about 1.2 percent of total global emissions in 2012.

A couple of simplifying assumptions are at work here. One is that the researchers simply use global averages for things like emission from the electric grid rather than trying to divvy up paper production locally. This is partly because they want to give a general answer about the effects of recycling. The other assumption is that the paper industry (recycling or no) doesn’t change the amount of carbon in forests. That may sound strange, but the idea is that this actually depends more on how the forestry is done. Harvesting trees for paper can be done sustainably or unsustainably. And reducing virgin material demand for paper may or may not actually translate to more carbon staying in forests depending on other drivers of deforestation. All those questions are set aside.

Paper air plan

The results show that, even with a moderately cleaner energy system in 2050, doubling the rate of recycling while increasing overall production would lead to slightly more emissions than the 2012 baseline. But with more aggressive improvements across the board, substantial emissions reductions would be possible.

Put another way, hitting targets consistent with that 2°C warming goal requires greater improvements to the energy supplying recycling activities and to landfill management. Otherwise, trading out virgin paper production (with its use of carbon-neutral fuels) for recycling plants running on fossil fuel energy leaves emissions treading water.

Breaking the results down by individual factors illustrates what’s going on. If nothing else changed from 2012, maxing out paper recycling would increase emissions for the paper industry. But cleaning up the grid (and/or reducing emissions from fuels burned for heat) has a large impact on the industry’s carbon footprint. Secondary to that, reducing emissions from paper that does end up in landfills—by capturing methane and burning it to generate electricity—would also have a significant impact.

So if your focus is solely on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, paper recycling isn’t the lever you pull. Instead, you target the factors surrounding paper recycling (and many other things). But given success on those things, increased paper recycling is perfectly consistent with global emissions targets. In the scenario with the most aggressive improvements, the researchers calculate that paper industry emissions could be slightly less than zero. That is, the growing amount of paper products in circulation would represent a bit more carbon than was released to make them.

Of course, paper recycling can have benefits separate from greenhouse gas emissions. Ideally, it helps reduce deforestation and habitat loss—which would also improve the bottom line for emissions. There are no sustainability silver bullets, but this study shows that paper recycling can at least fit in the puzzle.

Nature Sustainability, 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-00624-z ( About DOIs ).

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Reducing Waste: What You Can Do

• How do I recycle my?
• Composting at Home
• Household Hazardous Waste
• Frequent Questions on Recycling
• Resources for Businesses, States and Local Governments

Find out what you can do to help make a difference in our environment every day. Whether you're at home, on the go, in the office, or at school, there are many opportunities to go green by Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling.

Tips for Home

• Tips for Students and Schools 

Tips for Work

Tips for communities, tips for travel.

• Tips for Holidays and Events

The best place to start making a difference is right in your own home. Learn how you can reduce, reuse, and recycle materials to decrease household waste. The tips below will help you get started.

Lawn and Garden

• Learn to compost at home . Use food scraps, yard trimmings, and other organic wastes to create a compost pile. Adding the compost you make to soil increases water retention, decreases erosion, and keeps organic materials out of landfills. 
• Raise the cutting height of your lawnmower during hot summer months to keep grass roots shaded and cooler, reducing weed growth, browning, and the need for watering.
• If you need large lawn and garden equipment such as tillers and chainsaws, you can reduce waste (and save money) by setting up a sharing program with your neighbors.
• When you mow, “grasscycle” by leaving grass clippings on your lawn instead of bagging then. The clippings will return nutrients to the soil instead of taking up space in landfills.
• Donate healthy plants that you want to replace to community gardens, parks and schools.
• If you have a wood burning fireplace, save your ashes instead of throwing them away. Once cooled, wood ashes can be mixed into your compost heap and provide nutrients to your garden.

Home Improvement

• Use insulation made from recycled paper, glass, and other recovered materials.
• Clean and properly store tools, toys and outdoor furniture to protect them from damage and keep them out of landfills.
• Turn off or unplug lights during the day. Doing so will save energy and help your lights last longer.
• Storms can cause power outages. Prevent waste by keeping rechargeable batteries for your flashlights. If you do use disposable batteries, reduce hazardous waste by buying ones with low mercury content.

Moving & Cleaning

• Have a yard sale to find homes for clothes, toys, appliances, and books that you no longer need.
• When moving, use old newspapers to wrap fragile materials.
• Use moving boxes with the highest content of recycled paper and bubble wrap containing recycled plastic. Be sure to recycle packaging materials after your move. Many organizations, such as U-Haul, have places where you can drop of unused boxes for others to reuse.
• Be sure to properly dispose of any non-recyclable items that you won’t be taking with you. Look for household hazardous waste collection days in your community to properly dispose of cleaners, paints, automotive supplies and other hazardous items.
• For cleaning chores, buy reusable mops, rags and sponges. When using cleaning products, use only the amount you need and follow the bottle’s directions for use and disposal.

Tips for Students and Schools

Students, parents, and teachers can all make a difference in reducing waste at school. By practicing the "3 R's" of waste reduction—reduce, reuse, and recycle—we can all do our part.

Green School Supplies

• Think green before you shop . Before starting the new school year, look through last year’s materials. Many items can be reused or recycled.
• Purchase and use school supplies made from recycled products, such as pencils made from old blue jeans and binders made from old shipping boxes.
• Keep waste out of landfills by using school supplies wrapped in minimal packaging, and buying in bulk when possible.
• Save packaging, colored paper, egg cartons and other items for arts and crafts projects. Look for other ways that you can reduce the amount of packing that you throw away.
• Maintain new school supplies. Keep track of pens and pencils. Make an effort to put your things in a safe place every day. This will not only reduce waste, but save you money in the long run.

In the Cafeteria

If you bring your lunch to school, package it in reusable containers instead of disposable ones. Carry food in reusable plastic or cloth bags, and bring drinks in a thermos instead of disposable bottles or cartons. Read EPA's Pack a Waste Free Lunch guide for more tips.

When buying lunch, grab only what you need. Too often extra ketchup packets and napkins go to waste.

Remember to recycle your cans and bottles after you finish eating.

Work with your teachers to set up a composting program at school.

Make posters that remind students what can be composted or recycled.

Engage and motivate your coworkers to buy green products and help reduce waste. Learn more about how your office can go green.

In the Office

• Instead of printing hard copies of your documents, save them to your hard drive or email them to yourself to save paper.
• Make your printer environmentally friendly. Change your printer settings to make double-sided pages. Use small point fonts when possible and use the “fast draft" setting when possible to save ink.
• Pay your bills via e-billing programs when possible to save paper.
• Use paperclips (over staples) when possible.
• Reuse envelopes with metal clasps and reuse file folders by sticking a new label over the previous one.

Green Purchasing at Work

• Purchase recycled paper and keep a recycling bin nearby your desk.
• For information on how to buy more recycled-content products for your office, see EPA’s Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines .
• Buy energy efficient items with the ENERGY STAR ® logo or items that are EPEAT registered for the office.

Check out these success stories for other ideas.

Citizens in every community can do many activities to work together and reduce waste. Each of us can make a difference by reducing, reusing, and recycling materials throughout our communities-and encouraging our neighbors to do the same.

• Donate your old computers and tablets to a school. Many schools will be able to make good use of your old machine.
• Before replacing a computer that no longer fits your needs, consider enhancing the computer’s capacity by upgrading the hard drive or memory. This can save you money too.
• Donating used (but still operating) electronics for reuse extends the lives of valuable products and keeps them out of the waste stream for a longer period of time. Learn where to donate your TVs, computers .
• Be smart with your smart phone! It contains precious raw materials. Learn how to keep your information and our environment safe when donating your old device. Check out our guide

Starting Community Projects

• On Earth Day, April 22, show your commitment to a clean environment by volunteering for a cleanup effort in your community.
• Organize a recycling drive in your neighborhood or at school. Collect bottles, glass, plastic, newspapers or books and take them to your local recycling center or a charity in need.
• Create a community drop-off site for old computers at a neighborhood school.
• Set up a composting program for your neighborhood or school. It only takes a small amount of land space to collect organic waste into a compost pile. The compost can be bagged and sold for community and school funds.
• Hold a “donation picnic” at your local park or rec center. Participants can eat, talk and bring their old toys, clothes, books, furniture and other items for charitable organizations.

Travelers create a lot of waste, even with the best intentions. Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, you can do a few simple things that will reduce your waste, conserve resources, and minimize the overall environmental impact of your visit.

Trips and Vacations

• When visiting beaches and parks, be sure to take back everything you bring in, so that you can leave places undisturbed and without any litter.
• To pass the time on long drives or rainy vacation days, bring scrap paper for drawing and games.
• Hot summer days make you thirsty. Be sure to recycle your used drink containers. Consider putting a filter on your water tap and refilling bottles with the filtered water. Instead of buying many small drink bottles, buy drink mixes in bulk and fill your reusable bottles.
• Share the ride and the road. Public transportation and carpooling reduce pollution.

Car Maintenance

• If you change your own motor oil, collect and store used oil in a sturdy plastic container and take it to a recycling center .Dumping oil down storm drains or on the ground can contaminate groundwater.
• Purchase extended life anti-freeze for your car. When it’s time to change it out, take your used anti-freeze to a recycling center. Call 1-800-CLEANUP or visit Earth 911's website to find the recycling center nearest to you.
• Take used or damaged car batteries to auto stores that stock or repair lead-acid batteries for safe disposal. The batteries contain toxic amounts of lead and acid, and should not be thrown out with your regular trash.
• Return used car tires to retailers or wholesalers that recycle or retread them. Tires are banned from most landfills, and illegally dumped tires become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other pests.
• Make sure your car has a clean air filter—a dirty air filter can increase your car’s fuel consumption by as much as 10 percent. Instead of sending your car to a low-value car to a landfill, offer it to a local charity. The gift will be tax-deductible.

Tips for the Holidays

Holidays are the best time to connect with family and friends, but parties and gift giving often creates extra waste. Learn what you can do to keep your holidays as green as possible.

Giving Gifts

• Think green before you shop the holiday sales. Bring your own reusable cloth bag for carrying your purchases, and try to buy items with minimal packaging and/or made with recycled content.
• Wrap gifts in recycled or reused wrapping paper. Also remember to save or recycle your used wrapping paper. Give gifts that don't require much packaging, such as concert tickets or gift certificates.
• Send recycled-content greeting cards and remember to recycle any paper cards you receive. You can also try sending electronic greeting cards to reduce paper waste.
• Bake cookies or other goodies and package them in reusable and/or recyclable containers as gifts. Homemade goodies show how much you care and help you avoid packaging waste.
• When gifting flowers, consider buying long-lasting silk flowers, potted plants, or live bushes, shrubs, or trees that can be planted in the spring as gifts.

Green Parties and Events

• If you host a party, set the table with cloth napkins and reusable dishes, glasses, and silverware. Also save and reuse party hats, decorations, and favors.
• Be sure your guests know where to properly dispose of and recycle their wastes at your party.
• After holiday festivities, put leftovers in recyclable containers, and share them with family, friends, or others. Donate untouched leftovers from parties to a local food bank or homeless shelter.
• After parties, fill your dishwasher up completely before running it. You will run fewer cycles, which saves energy.
• Recycle Home
• Reduce and Reuse Basics
• Recycling Basics and Benefits
• How Do I Recycle...
• What You Can Do
• Used Electronics
• Used Batteries
• Food Waste Prevention
• Students and Educators

Composting and Climate Change

A bowl of organic scraps ready to be composted. Photo: C. Carignan, UME

Composting is probably seen by most people as good for gardens and the environment. After all, compost helps make our soils and plants healthier and keeps green waste from our yards and kitchens out of landfills.

But is composting good in the context of our climate crisis? Doesn’t the composting process generate lots of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas (GHG) that traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere? Can composting also mitigate climate change and make our yards and landscapes more climate-resilient? The answer to both questions is YES. This article will show that composting, at the home, community, and municipal/commercial level, is an important global warming mitigation and adaptation tool. As we’ll see, the ways that humans manage this natural process and use the compost can affect the climate benefits.

Composting basics

We don’t make compost! Huge populations of microorganisms do most of the work and we humans manage the process for our benefit. It’s nature’s way of recycling anything that lives and dies, like plants, animals, and microbes.

The decomposition process produces lots of carbon dioxide (CO2), part of the world’s carbon cycling system shown in this graphic:

This CO2 release is considered biogenic (happens through natural biological systems), not anthropogenic (people-made), and is not included in the calculations of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that drive global warming and climate change.

The three primary GHGs are:

• Carbon dioxide (CO2)  — 300-1,000 year atmospheric lifetime; 86% of total GHG emissions
• Methane (CH4)  — 84X the global warming potential of CO2; 12 year atmospheric lifetime; 7% of total GHG emissions
• Nitrous oxide (NO2)  — 265X the global warming potential of CO2; 100 year atmospheric lifetime; 6% of total GHG emissions

There are many factors that determine the potential for composting to generate methane and nitrous oxide, like the mix of materials being composted, temperature, moisture, pile size and configuration, and aeration. Compost piles and windrows that are waterlogged and low in oxygen (anaerobic) are more likely to generate these GHGs. Composting is “climate-friendly” when it’s done in the presence of air (aerobic). Home and community composters turn piles by hand to keep them aerated and large-scale composting facilities use mechanical turners and force air into windrows with blowers. Well-managed composting at any scale releases very little methane or nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. 

Direct climate benefits of composting

• Dumping food wastes and grass clippings in landfills generates large amounts of methane because the decomposition process is anaerobic. Landfills release about 17% of total U.S. anthropogenic methane emissions and  food waste makes up 24% of landfill space . Burning organic wastes releases GHGs and toxins. Composting these organic wastes using best practices greatly reduces emissions.
• Carbon sequestration: Compost continues to degrade after soil incorporation. Some of the carbon cycles through soil microorganisms and some is held tightly to clay particles, protected against decomposition, and becomes part of the long-term reserve of stored carbon.

Indirect climate benefits of composting

The mid-Atlantic climate is becoming wetter and warmer overall, punctuated by localized extreme weather events, like record-breaking rainfall and extreme drought and heat. Intense storms can cause soils and nutrients to wash away and warmer temperatures cause more rapid organic matter decomposition and turnover, especially if soils are tilled and uncovered.

Adding compost to soils makes them more resilient by:

• Holding more water in the soil during periods of drought and extreme heat
• Reducing erosion (washing away of soil during extreme rainfall) and nutrient run-off) due to improved soil structure (larger, more stable aggregates or crumbs)
• Improving plant growth, by slow release of plant-available nutrients
• Reducing the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers which require natural gas for their production
• Reducing the need for potassium and phosphorous fertilizers (derived from mined mineral deposits that are dwindling worldwide)
• Binding and degrading toxic metals and pollutants
• Substituting compost for peat products can help reduce the release of CO2 from commercial peat extraction from wetlands 

Home composting

Managing and recycling as much yard waste as possible on-site is often the most climate-friendly approach because it reduces GHG emissions from transporting and processing or landfilling organic waste. You can do this by recycling grass clipping (“mow ‘em high and let ‘em lie”), mulch-mowing tree leaves and leaving them in place, or using them as mulch, composting yard and garden waste, and burying kitchen scraps. These practices help to recycle nutrients on-site and increase soil organic matter. Selecting or building a non-plastic composter can also help reduce GHG emissions.

Municipal/commercial composting

This is the next best option for organic wastes that cannot be managed on-site. Commercial and municipal composting operations do create GHG emissions from the trucks and equipment, powered by fossil fuels, that are used to collect, transport, and process organic waste and compost. The closer the source of organic waste to the facility the lower the emissions and the greater the benefits. On balance, composting on a large scale can also help mitigate climate change.

To summarize: aerobic composting reduces GHG emissions compared to the landfilling and incineration of organic wastes. The resulting compost sequesters carbon when mixed into soils and improves soil health and resiliency. Composting at home and in your community is the most climate-friendly approach but commercial and municipal composting is another important tool that helps mitigate climate change.

• Silver, W. L., Vergara, S. E., & Mayer, A. (2018). Carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation potential of composting and soil amendments on California’s rangelands .  California Natural Resources Agency ,  62 .
• Linzner, R., & Mostbauer, P. (2005, October). Composting and its impact on climate change with regard to process engineering and compost application-a case study in Vienna . In  Proceedings of Sardinia Tenth International landfill Symposium, Cagliari, CISA publisher .
• Institute for Local Self-Reliance- Community Composting
• U.S. Composting Council- Greenhouse Gases and the Role of Composting: A Primer for Compost Producers (includes some research studies on GHG emissions and composting facilities)
• Maryland Department of the Environment- Organics Diversion and Composting
• U.S. EPA- Overview of Greenhouse Gases

Author: Jon Traunfeld, Extension Specialist, University of Maryland Extension Home & Garden Information Center

Related information

Sustainable Gardening: Solutions to Climate Change

How to Make Compost at Home

Still have a question? Contact us at  Ask Extension .

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Reuse, Recycle to Reduce Time Spent on College Scholarship Essays

Recycling can help our planet by reusing old goods and creating brand new, useful items. You can also use a similar process when writing your essays for scholarships . The more time you save reusing older materials, the more time you'll have to research and apply for scholarships that give you the best chance at getting free money for college and possibly minimizing the amount of student loan debt you'll have.

Not only is this a great timesaving method, but it will also help you stay informed and organized throughout your scholarship search and application process. You can with these four easy steps.

1. Make a spreadsheet and get organized: Compiling information about the scholarships you've chosen to apply for is a good first step. That way, you have important information like due dates and eligibility requirements organized. If you've done a good job researching scholarships that match you, your interests and experiences, you should have fewer applicants to compete against.

You can also use the spreadsheet to determine if you'll need to do further research into the scholarship. Once you start recycling your essays, you'll need to know some more specific details in order to reuse your writing to create new, effective essays for each prompt or scholarship.

[ Know what to do before, during and after the scholarship search. ]

2. Understand the essay prompts: Chances are many scholarships will have different word length requirements and prompts that you will need to write on for your essay, so make sure you take note of what exactly is being asked.

If you don't quite understand an essay question or prompt, ask a teacher, counselor, mentor or parent. Many scholarship committees will check to see if you have paid attention to the requirements and have written an essay that fully responds to the prompt . They want to see if you have followed directions.

Sometimes, you can also look at the scholarship provider's website to see what the essays from past winners were like. This can increase your chances of winning by seeing exactly what the judges are looking for and different ways other students have interpreted the topic.

You may find that some scholarship essay prompts are similar. Consider grouping these together on your list. For example, you may have community service prompts, prompts that ask you about challenges you've overcome, etc. Later, when you are working on your essays, you'll be able to use some of the same material to apply to these scholarships.

[ Explore tips and resources about paying for college. ]

3. Collect and organize your materials: There are many places where you can find "recyclable" essay materials. These might include personal statements , college application essays, resumes and even certain essays you wrote for class. Find anything that you might be able to use based on the prompts for the scholarships on your list.

Take a close look your writing and see if anything works for the prompts on your list. If you have spare copies, or can make them, take notes on sections that can be recycled to visit when you get down to starting your essays and take note of which scholarships fit with each section you will reuse.

[ Target these scholarships for your senior year to-do list. ]

4. Create new scholarship essays using old, recycled materials: Once you have matched your material with the corresponding prompts, start crafting your scholarship essays keeping in mind all of the research into the topics you've done.

While you might use some of the same writing for multiple essays, each essay should still be tailored to the scholarship you are applying for. For example, multiple essays may have a prompt that asks you share a time when you overcame a challenge. You can "recycle" the story portion your challenge for multiple essays, but to each specific scholarship in the introduction and concluding paragraphs.

Once you've finished, proofread the essay yourself and have an editor double and triple check your work before you send it in for consideration with the scholarship committee.

Reducing the amount of time you consume writing essays by recycling and reusing writing you've already done can give you an edge in the highly competitive scholarship game. Using this and as many tactics and resources you can will help increase the chances you'll be financially as ready for college as possible.

Liz Chereskin is the Content Manager for College Greenlight , a leading college and scholarship resource for first-generation and underrepresented students. College Greenlight helps students find colleges that match them and scholarships to fund their education and is a service of Cappex.com.