Thursday, April 3, 2014

Refuse - the fourth R

cards ordered from moo.com

The Plastic Pollution Coalition has introduced me to a fourth R - Refuse. So it's Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Refusing brings a bit of advocacy into the Reduce strategy. And that's perfect for what I'm trying to accomplish this year. It will however be a challenge for me to go this Refuse route. By nature I'm a conflict-avoider and recoil at the thought of embarrassing someone for essentially doing their job (giving me a straw, paper napkin, disposable cup, etc.). I'm going to turn that awkward moment into an opportunity to share the message with others. When I ask the waitress if I could use my own cup for a cold drink...I'm going to share the reason why with her, ack! I'm enlisting a prop to help me out. I've purchased 100 of these little cards to help me broach the subject and leave people with something to think about. On the front is a brief statistic and the link to this blog, and on the back is an image related to upcycling/reusing. I hope that the act of handing this over and gently explaining what I'm trying to accomplish this year will endear me slightly and make this refuse thing easier to deal with. 

(I did a bad and ordered some mini-cards that are not printed on recycled paper, they do claim to be sustainably sourced though...I'll Do Better next time...and now I REALLY feel pressure to use them up so that won't have been an even greater waste of resources).  

No comments:

Post a Comment