The Fourth “R”

Did you know that there is a fourth R that corresponds with the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra? I didn’t until recently when I was reading another blog about environmental issues. It’s “Refuse.” So simple. Such an obvious action to take but how many of us actually decline something offered? Particularly if it is free?

As we are packing our home for the Great House Adventure (as I refer to this big step in our lives), I am realizing that I wish I had utilized that fourth “R” a lot more often in my life. To simply say “no thank you” would have meant less clutter or miscellaneous items in my home that I am now having to make a decision on. When looking through W’s toy box, we should have refused those cheap-o toys that come in the Kid Meal they love so dearly. They break and don’t keep their interest very long so they eventually wind up as so much debris in the back corner of the toy box. Maybe I should start offering to pay my child a quarter or 50 cents in exchange for not getting a toy. Bribery… would that be such a bad thing in this regard? I say that in jest. Partially, anyway.

If you think about what you encounter in your own day-to-day, do you find yourself with a surplus of items that you didn’t really need but you got anyway? I cannot tell you how many packets of salsa I would get with a breakfast burrito that I wouldn’t eat before I finally started saying, “Please don’t include the salsa.” Apparently, my coworkers also receive a lot of freebies that they apparently didn’t need or want. I was organizing the kitchen because the mess was just not appealing and there were so. many. packets. Packets of mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, salsa, you name it, I think we had at least two of them. I get it. There are a lot of meetings where food is ordered and the restaurants include them to satisfy the customer but wouldn’t it be nice if we had asked for fewer packets? Less waste of food and of trash.

I regularly turn down the free marinara from our favorite drive through pizza chain. The main reason for declining it was I didn’t want that spilling in my vehicle and staining the seats. The second reason was no one was eating it so why bring it home? Granted it is just a small bowl of marinara and I might be able to figure out a way to incorporate that with some pasta for a later meal but for the interim, I refuse to bring it home. That’s one less thing I will probably end up throwing away later.

Drinking straws are another really good opportunity to practice the fourth “R”. If the restaurant you’re dining at is clean, why not just drink from the glass? Did you know that drinking from a straw can cause you to possibly have more gas than drinking from the glass itself? So be less gassy and refuse a straw! Or bring your own reusable metal straw or perhaps try out one of those biodegradable ones. I know they’re out there; I saw them at Big Blue Box Store recently but haven’t had a chance to try them out yet.

If you are heading home after work and you stop by to pick up takeout, refuse the plastic utensils they offer. You’re going home and I bet you already have silverware at home that probably cuts better than the plastic utensils they were offering.

These are just a few suggestions for how you could start implementing the fourth R in your daily life. I know there are many more out there. What ideas do you have?

I would also like to apologize for the missing posts from last week. In addition to my daily job, I have what I call a side hustle that we’ll talk about in this week’s Financial Friday. I had a couple of projects on deadline this past week and not enough hours to do a proper blog posting. My apologizes, dear reader!