The six Rs: reduce, refuse, re-use, repair, recycle, rethink

Imagine the headband on your wireless headphones cracks. A new pair costs thirty pounds. A spare headband costs eight, plus ten minutes with a small screwdriver. Which do you do: buy the new pair, or fit the new headband? Most people buy new, because it is quicker. Yet the only broken part is one band of plastic. The speakers, the battery and the circuit board all still work. Six words beginning with R settle that choice, and the headphones return to test them.

The six Rs are six ways to cut what a product takes from the planet and leaves behind: reduce, refuse, re-use, repair, recycle and rethink. Reduce means using less material or energy, or fewer parts. A takeaway cup with thinner walls uses less board for every drink. Here, to refuse, said like confuse, is a verb: to say no. You refuse a product you do not need, or one that is unsustainable, like a free plastic bag at the till. Say you turn down a printed receipt at a shop. Which R is that? That is to refuse. Saying no to a receipt you never wanted means no paper or ink is used for it. There is a different word, spelled the same, that means rubbish. In the six Rs, to refuse never means throwing something away. Re-use means using a product again, for the same job or a new one, without breaking it down. A refillable water bottle is re-used every day. Repair means fixing a product rather than replacing it, like a new zip sewn into a favourite coat. Recycle means breaking a product down into raw material to make something new, like crushed cans melted into fresh aluminium. Rethink means questioning how a product is designed, made and used, so a problem disappears. Shampoo sold as a solid bar needs no bottle at all. Here's one to place: a glass jar, washed and kept as a pen pot. Re-use or recycle, and why? Re-use. The jar is still whole; it has only found a new job. Crushed and melted into a new bottle, it would be recycled, and the jar would be gone.

Upcycling is a form of re-use. It turns an unwanted product, or its material, into a new product of higher value, without breaking the material down. Old wooden pallets become a garden bench. A worn chest of drawers is sanded and painted to look softly aged, a style called shabby chic. The work is cleaning, cutting, joining and finishing what is already there. Take a small business that makes shoulder bags from worn-out jeans that charity shops cannot sell. The jeans are washed, cut into panels and sewn, with the pockets and seams kept as part of the design. How is that different from recycling the jeans? Recycling would shred the jeans back to fibre to spin new yarn. That takes energy and machinery, and it shortens the fibres. Upcycling keeps the fabric whole and makes it into something worth more. That brings two benefits for the environment. No new cotton is grown for the bag, so no extra water, pesticide or farmland is used for it. And jeans that would have gone to landfill or been burned stay in use, so there is less waste, and no carbon dioxide from burning them. Now the catch: why could upcycled bags never stock a chain of a thousand shops? Each bag is cut and sewn by hand, and no two pairs of jeans match in size or colour. The work is slow and every bag differs, so it suits small runs, not mass production. Makers still choose it, because it needs no new raw material and little energy, and a one-off look sells. It only works while the material is still sound. One examiner's report notes this about a re-use task: Candidates design creatively which was evident when asked to design a simple shopping bag, reusing a t-shirt. So designing a new use comes naturally to plenty of students. The habit to add is explaining the benefit for the environment, and judging which R does the most.

Knowing each R means placing it on sight, so here is a cafe trying to be more sustainable, with six changes. Staff ask before handing out a straw. Customers who bring their own cup get twenty-five pence off. The cups get thinner walls. A broken coffee grinder is fixed. Used paper cups are pulped into new card. And a new cup folds shut, so it needs no lid. Can you match each of the six cafe changes to one R? Asking first lets customers refuse a straw. Money off for your own cup is re-use. Thinner walls are reduce, and fixing the grinder is repair. Pulping the cups is recycle. The cup that folds shut is rethink, because the lid problem is designed out altogether. Each one also needs its so-that. Fewer straws, so less crude oil is used and less is thrown away. One cup used hundreds of times, so hundreds fewer cups are made. Thinner walls, so fewer trees are felled for board. A fixed grinder means no new metal or polymer goes into a replacement. Pulped cups become card, not landfill, though pulping still uses energy and water. And a cup with no lid means no lid is ever made. The six Rs are not equal, though. A cordless drill still works, but its battery no longer holds a charge. You could replace the battery, or send the whole drill for recycling. Battery or whole drill: which choice saves more material and energy, and why? Replacing the battery. The motor, gearbox and casing stay in use, so no new ABS, steel or copper is needed for a new drill. Making one battery takes far less energy than making a whole tool. Recycling the drill would still use energy to collect, shred and melt it. So the drill is repaired, and recycling is kept for the part that failed: the old battery goes to a battery collection point. That is the general pattern. Refuse, reduce, re-use and repair keep material and energy in use. Recycling still spends energy, so it is the good option once the others are used up.

Back to the cracked headband. A full analysis puts every R to the same product, then makes a call. First, could you refuse a new pair altogether? The old ones still play, so refusing saves the ABS, copper and lithium a new pair would use. Repair: the spare headband keeps a working product in use, with only one small part made new. Re-use: if you do buy new, the old pair could be given away or sold, not binned. Now add the missing link: what does passing the old pair on do for the planet? Someone else uses them instead of buying new, so one fewer pair is made from new oil and mined metal, and one fewer goes to landfill. That link is what one examiner's report asks for: Relating benefit to the environment, justifying answers provided, need some further practice to ensure full marks can be gained. Naming the R is not enough; the benefit has to reach the planet. The fix is a so-that on every R: what it saves, and what that does for the environment. Reduce: if you buy, choose a pair with fewer parts, or one built so its parts can be swapped. Recycle: when the old pair truly cannot be used by anyone, take it to an electrical recycling point, so its metals are recovered rather than buried. Rethink: do you need wireless at all? A wired pair has no battery to wear out. Now the judgement: which two Rs do the most for this fault, and why? Refusing a new pair, and repairing the old one. The only fault is a crack, so a new headband keeps everything else working. Recycling is the last resort, kept for the true end of the headphones' life.

Time to see which Rs you can now place without any help. A school prints its worksheets on both sides of the paper. Which R, and what does it save? Reduce. Half the paper is used, so fewer trees are felled and less energy goes into making paper. Now a different one: in the six Rs, what does it mean to refuse? To say no, to a product you do not need or one that is unsustainable. It never means rubbish. Here's another: old wine crates are made into a bookshelf. Recycle or upcycle? Upcycle, the kind of re-use that adds value. The wood is kept whole and made into something worth more; nothing is broken down. Try a last one: which R saves the headphones, and why is it better than buying new? Repair. Only the headband is broken, so one small new part keeps the speakers, battery and board in use, where a new pair needs all-new oil and metal.

If you can place all six Rs and say what each one saves, you're solid on this, and a thumbs up means you can skip it next time round. If they still blur, say the six out loud once, each with an example, and they tend to stick.

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