The Sherpa Project

Blog Action Day is finally here. I’m extremely excited to read the posts that get posted by a variety of bloggers today. The number of blogs participating is upwards of 15,000. This post is my contribution.

It’s fairly common to hear the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Just about everyone recognizes this slogan and many practice the Three Rs in their day-to-day lives. While it’s important to recognize the outcomes of reducing, reusing, and recycling - we are still leaving out a core piece of the equation - elimination.

While thinking of the Three Rs, the intent is to place the options in the preferred order. Reduction is preferred over reuse and reuse is preferred over recycling. All of these options are obviously preferred over disposal. We can think of the Three Rs as a typical rank-ordered listing:

This all makes sense right? Minimize consumption (reduce) if you can, otherwise work your way down the list (reuse, recycle, and dispose as a last resort).

I’d propose taking this list a step further. Reduction is a good option, but even better is complete elimination. I guess that in a way, it’s the ultimate reduction.

In theory this all sounds good, but what does it really mean? What does it mean to eliminate or to move towards elimination in the context of dealing with waste?

I tend to think of elimination two different ways.

The first way I think of elimination is simple removal. There are many times that this can be accomplished with minimal effort. As an example, I decided a week or so ago to jump on the bandwagon (for a good reason) and stop drinking bottled water. I’ve completely eliminated my consumption of bottled water. I bought a full-house water filter and broke out my Sigg water bottle to reuse. Simple right?

The second way I think of elimination is complete re-thinking. I’m always amazed at how little we question our beliefs and habits. Re-thinking involves taking new approaches, using creative thinking, and relying on hyper-productive design to remove the need for particular items. One application of re-thinking is using Whole-System Design to remove sub-optimization and unneeded elements. For a good example of re-thinking check out the Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier article from the Rocky Mountain Institute.

A combination of these strategies will help us move towards attitudes and actions that will lead us away from the consumption habits that we’ve grown accustomed to. The sooner that we embrace elimination, reduction, and reuse - the sooner we can move away from mitigation and focus on regeneration (where we ultimately need to end up).