Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:

Cohabitation in the built environment

Kristen Bushnell

Amy Harpster

Sarah Simchuk

Jen Manckia

Cathy Stevens

Introduction

Reduce, reuse and recycle is a concept that people everywhere are starting to understand and apply to everyday life. Its principles are quite basic, but are a necessity for maintaining a sustainable life. To remain productive, reducing one's intake of energy and materials is vital. The toxicity of trash is at an all time high and the only way to stop this is by preventing waste from the very beginning of its life. The concept of reuse is applied by reinventing items after their initial life and avoiding additional waste by all means necessary. Though the concept of reuse is very important to the lifecycle of a material, there are times when a second life simply cannot be created for a certain item. However, when one does have to throw an item away; an important proactive strategy is to buy products that can be recycled or, at the very least, determine in advance the product is an alternative to a similar, less recyclable material. Recycling is the process of turning items considered to be waste into a valuable resource. This process does include many steps, but begins with taking items such as cans, glass, newspapers or plastic to a recycle bin or collection facility. The more often individual users partake in this practice by consciously making themselves aware of an item's recyclability, the easier the entire process will be for the rest of the world. This ease will simply create a higher demand for recycled products and will be more of an incentive for large companies and corporations to use and buy recycled products, making the entire process more successful and stress free. These simple ideas of reduce, reuse, recycle are just the beginning of challenging ourselves in preserving our environment, but extremely essential in ensuring the success of conservation.

The notion of reduce, reuse and recycle was obvious when developing a concept for Resource Management. By design, Resource management is the practice of effectively managing the services that already exist within our building and creating a more healthful and efficient environment. This is an important aspect of sustainability in locations that may have been built years ago without sustainability in mind, and can thus use an efficiency makeover; such as the College of Architecture and Planning. In order to specify the needs of a building, we must look at the general ideas of reduce, reuse and recycle as a simplified and straightforward approach