Precycling - the Next Wave?
Everyone loves their buzzwords.
The latest is “precycling.” And it’s something that I’ve been trying to get myself to think about and actually do it.
What is precycling? Well, recycling is the act of changing a product or material back to its original form or raw material to be used again in another product or material instead of tossing it in the landfill. The thing to consider is that it takes energy (fuel for transport, energy to recycle, fuel to transport the raw materials, energy to create a new product, etc.) to recycle.
Precycling isn’t so much a technique or process. It’s taking an action to prevent the need to recycle in the first place. For example - - you could go to the grocery store and use the plastic or paper bags to take home your groceries. Then, you could recycle the bags. The truly smart move would be to take your own cloth or canvas bags to the store with you and avoid the need to recycle anything. That’s precycling.
Another way to precycle is to buy a product in the biggest container possible and using it for a longer period of time. This prevents you from using up a ton of little containers and recycling all of them. Some jumbo boxes of cereal hold as much as three regular boxes. Buy one big water bottle instead of all smaller 12 oz. bottles (I try to re-use those water bottles more than once if I ever do break down and buy them. I simply wash them off and refill them with the big jug of water.)
I try to use this justification whenever I buy pizza, too. I tell my wife that I need the ginormous extra-EXTRA large pizza that’s as big as the hood of your car instead of buying several small pizzas in all those cardboard boxes… She never goes for it.
So, we’re going to try to precycle more. We still collect all the bottles, cans, boxes, wrappers, and plastic we can and drop it off at the recycling once a week. But our goal is to try to cut down on some of our recycling as well.
