Ten Rs Can Change the Planet
Cape Cod News editorial staff
Looking at waste reduction and the role individuals can play on this Earth Day and Earth Month 2025.
We The People have power, we have power, and we need to use our power for the good of the environment.
Meg Morris, Chair, Brewster Waste Reduction and Recycling Commission
Can individuals make a difference for Earth Day?
18 April, 2025 – BREWSTER, MA - At its 55th Anniversary this year, Earth Day continues to remind us to pause and consider how we treat our little blue marble of a planet – and drives awareness and action from Cape Cod to the entire globe.
In Brewster, the renamed Waste Reduction and Recycling Commission says one aspect of care for our planet lies in reducing waste in all its forms -- and this type of small but vital activity represents an aspect of environmental care where individual actions do make a difference.
What is Earth Day?
At the inaugural Earth Day in April 1970 an estimated 20 million people nationwide responded to the call to fight for environmental causes and oppose environmental degradation – this year, EarthDay.org https://www.earthday.org/ says it expects more than 1 billion people world wide to mobilize to champion the health of our shared planet Earth.
Meg Morris, Chair of Brewster’s newly renamed Waste Reduction and Recycling Commission says that locally on Cape Cod her commission and others in the region are taking this month to reflect on how every individuals make a difference, by rethinking and responding to the growing waste-stream of plastics and other materials we pour into our planet.
What role does waste play in the environment?
“A couple yours ago we started getting more intense about waste reduction, we got into composting, we got into bottle bans thing like that -- all those things reduce waste. And it finally occurred to us that people didn’t understand, they just thought were all about recycling so we decided to put it in our name, that we are the Waste Reduction and Recycling Commission” she added.
The name change – a move away from the generic recycling committee of old - represents part of a larger message about care of our planet and its work to focus on one aspect of environmental care where individual choice can make a difference.
How are the “Rs” changing?
The words “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” ring out in song and in the collective mindset, but Morris says they tell only one part of the story. While Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle still matter, today they’ve been joined by handful of new Rs, like refuse and regift – with recycle itself coming in at the end, as number 10.
What are the new “Rs”?
The new list being with Rethink, which Morris describes as a call to action to rethink what and how we consume, as well as the power of each individual decision.
The next R, Refuse, asks us to take what need. Do we need a plastic straw? Do we need a shopping bag for one single item? Refill encourages people to refill existing containers rather than generating new waste with an endless stream of new containers. Together, these actions focus the effort on Reduce, so that we have less waste from the beginning.
Cousins Repurpose and Regift say we can find other uses for items, rather than discarding them and that items often have another home. Repair reminds individuals that items don’t need to automatically tossed and often can be fixed for continued use.
The value of Rot
With an estimated 30% of the waste stream taking the form of organic material, like food scraps, the concept of Rot has really taken root. Home composters and municipal compost stations offer a path for organic waste to leave the trash and transfigure into soil amending gold.
Finally, Recycle
Then, at the end of list – after all other options – comes Recycle, as a last (but still important) resort.
These steps might seem like small decisions points, but collectively – said Morris – they make a real difference and a difference that each individual has the power to enact.
“We The People have power,” she said. “We have power, and we need to use our power for the good of the environment.”
For more information:
This day in history, Library of Congress, April 22
