The hunk of the American population that haven’t yet jumped onto the green trail have become annoyed with all of the hoopla surrounding the green movement. People are tired of hearing what they are doing is wrong. There aren’t immediate consequences we can see, so why should we care? Our worlds are already immensely busy anyway; we don’t have time to care about the environment. But it’s not the environment we are saving; it’s humanity we must save. We live in a habitable place as of now, but soon, things may start to change in a drastic manner, sending us into an environment we can no longer thrive in.

So for those who don’t want to go full greenie but are still into mainstream greening, here’s a quick little look into the three big R’s.

Reuse:

Nothing pains me more than seeing a couch, desk, bed frame, or (insert any furniture or useful and reusable item here) in a dumpster. In fact, that’s how we obtained our coffee table, our cool wooden desk and a few of our dining room chairs.

In my house, we’re suckers for dumpster diving. When I eye furniture in dumpsters, one of my roommates always tells me, “Don’t even think about it,” or “I’m not going to help you carry that,” while my other roommate will help me lug heavy items painfully out of the dumpster to it’s new destination without discussion.

There are more gems hidden in the heavy-duty trash bags that fill every corner of dumpsters. How many times have you thrown something out not because it was beyond repair but just because you were tired of seeing it in your home? One woman’s trash is another woman’s new desk.

Save the land and humanity in two easy steps; don’t throw out the stuff you don’t want and keep an eye out on Craigslist or Freecycle when you have something you need. It is a flawless way to recycle on a primary level, and you can get tons of awesome used stuff for free!

Oh, you’ve never heard of Freecycle? It’s a great non-profit online service that provides communities with a platform to trade unwanted items for free. Local volunteers moderate trades in each area. There are more than seven million members across the globe! The web address is www.freecycle.org.

It’s too bad most people don’t see this pure and easy form of recycling. You can easily reuse most of the packaging you buy in the store. Peanut butter jars can be used for houseplants or food storage. It’s free Tupperware! And that’s only one example.

Reduce:

If you reuse anything you can you are reducing. Don’t buy things you think cannot be reused by you. Buy glass. Glass recycles infinitely. Buy canned things; most metals can be recycled infinitely too. Buy things that have little to no packaging. Research your companies; you can’t believe every green colored logo out there.

Stop using plastic bags in the grocery stores. There are many companies who sell silk and cotton bags that can replace those thin produce bags we think add a certain cleanliness to our food. Stop buying things all the time. Try letting go of the things in your life that you think you can’t go without. You may be pleasantly surprised with what reducing does to your state of mind.

Recycle:

A large part of marketing in America is obsessed with the eco-revolution. It’s too bad it’s misleading, and an incomplete understanding of the green world and recycling is just as harmful as not caring about being ecologically friendly.

The strangest thing about the recycling movement is the way companies approached the growing trend of caring. We see little green leaves littering logos, screaming, “Hey, we’re green!” Made of 50 percent post-consumer plastic, or 30% or 20% or 100 percent recycled cardboard or aluminum, which is great, but mainstream recyclers may not understand the ins and outs of downcycling. Downcycling is when you recycle a material so much that it becomes so weak or toxic or both that it no longer can be recycled. And as these materials break down over and over again, the process requires more treatment, meaning more chemicals and more energy to just put off the not so final destination; the landfill. Another form of downcycling is taking plastics and making them into a completely different item that will once again be headed towards the landfill. A recent example would be the jerseys for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Feel free to look into it.

All three of the big R’s overlap in a multitude of ways. You can’t go wrong trying at least one.