Three R's of Going Green: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

To go green and live green, remember the Three R's: (1) reduce greenhouse gases in the environment, (2) reuse products, and (3) recycle items that can no longer be used. Going green leads to a healthier environment and a healthier environment leads to a healthier you!

Improve the environment and your health using Three R's of Going Green:

• Reduce or prevent waste to reduce greenhouse gases by using less and throwing away less.
• Reuse products by giving them to other people who want or need them instead of throwing them away.
• Recycle items made of materials such as glass, metal, plastic, or paper.

What It Means to "Go Green" and "Live Green"

Reducing or preventing waste, reusing products, and recycling items are important ways to go green and live green. Going green and living green means changing our lifestyles to protect the environment in ways that also protect our health.

The topics of going green, global climate change, and healthy community design are all linked.

Going green reduces greenhouse gases released into the environment from burning fossil fuels and decomposing waste. Scientists think greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are a primary contributor to global climate change, which can harm people's health.  For example, climate change can produce severe weather, floods, and heat waves that injure people or make them sick.

Also, greenhouse gases in the air we breathe can interact with sunlight and create ozone. Ozone along with soot particles from burning fossil fuels, which is called "particulate matter," are two of the main things in polluted air that can cause people to have breathing problems such as asthma. So when we go green to reduce greenhouse gases released into the environment, we are helping avoid health effects related to climate change and air pollution.

Another way to go green and live green is by designing and building healthy communities. In healthy communities, community members live and work in buildings and landscapes that are:

• Bike paths and walking trails;
• Community centers or other social gathering places;
• Parks and ample green space;
• Accessible public transit;
• Affordable housing that allows people of all incomes to live close to their jobs and retire in the community if they choose to; and
• Higher-density land use so homes, workplaces, schools, and recreation are closer together and people can walk or bike more easily to their destination.

Ways a community with those design elements could improve health include:

• Decreasing vehicle use, which reduces air pollution and greenhouse gases in the environment, improves air quality, reduces the risk of injury from vehicle crashes, and avoids contributing to climate change;
• Promoting physical activity, which gives benefits such as helping with weight control and reducing risk for developing heart disease; and
• Increasing social connectedness and improving mental health by giving people more time, opportunities, and pleasant surroundings for activities such as socializing, playing, and engaging in physical activity.

CDC Helps You Make Green Choices for Healthy Living

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose mission is to promote public health, gives you information you can use to go green and make choices that are good for both the environment and your health. The CDC Healthy Places Web site explains the concept of designing and building active communities that make it easier for people to live healthy lives. The CDC Climate Change and Public Health Web site tells about the potential health effects from climate change and about CDC’s efforts to anticipate, prevent, and respond to them.

CDC's experts have long been in the forefront of education and advocacy concerning going green, designing and building healthy communities, and protecting the public from the health effects of climate change. In the November 2008 special issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM), guest editors from CDC and Australian National University's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health and their colleagues issue a call to action on climate change and public health. Articles from the special issue, including five available free to nonsubscribers, are available online.

CDC's Recommendations

CDC makes the following recommendations for going green and living green:

1. Reduce or prevent waste to reduce greenhouse gases by using less and throwing away less.  Decreasing consumption of products and reducing or preventing waste lowers the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to the environment during resource extraction, manufacturing, trash burning, and decomposition of trash in landfills.

   You can also help the environment and your health when you reduce energy consumption. For instance, the Energy Star program of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy estimates that if the five most frequently used light fixtures or the bulbs in them in every American home were replaced with Energy Star bulbs, energy costs nationwide would be lowered by a total of almost $8 billion annually, and we would prevent amounts of greenhouse gas releases to the environment equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million cars.

2. Reuse products to prevent waste and improve our communities. Reusing products means that useful products discarded by people who no longer want or need them are given to people who do.

   Nearly every community can reuse products. For example, community members can:

   • Use durable coffee mugs instead of disposable cups,
   • Use cloth napkins or towels instead of paper ones,
   • Refill water bottles,
   • Donate old magazines or clothing,
   • Reuse boxes, and
   • Participate in a paint collection and reuse program.

   Reusing a product means it continues to be of value, it's useful, and it's productive.  More important, reusing an item instead of replacing it with something new means we don't use more resources to create new items.

3. Recycle items to get maximum value from them, use resources wisely, and avoid damage to the environment and our health. Recycling is beneficial not only environmentally but also financially and socially. Materials such as glass, metal, plastics, and paper are collected, separated, sent to processing facilities, and reprocessed into new materials.

   Recycling items that would otherwise be discarded means that those items will not have to be disposed of as trash. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 82 million tons of material was diverted away from landfills and incinerators in 2006, up from 34 million tons in 1990.

   Recycling also helps us use energy and other resources more wisely and avoid damage to the environment and our health. With recycling, we reprocess previously manufactured items instead of using resources and materials to manufacture new ones.

   You can find out more about recycling and take the recycling pledge on the National Recycling Coalition’s Web site for America Recycles Day*.
   

Use the Three R's of Going Green

To protect your health and the environment by going green and living green, remember and use the Three R's: (1) reduce or prevent waste, (2) reuse products, and (3) recycle. You may think the changes are small, but small changes can add up to big differences. Going green leads to a healthier environment, and a healthier environment leads to a healthier you!