Recycling - Buying Recycled

By reducing, reusing, recycling, and buying recycled-content products, every Californian can make a vital contribution to the fragile environment and help protect public health and safety at the same time.

The waste management hierarchy--reduce, reuse, recycle--actually expresses the order of importance of these ideas:

• Reduce needless consumption and the generation of waste.
• Reuse any item that can be reused or give it to a person or charity that can reuse it.
• Recycle whatever discards remain if you can and only dispose what you must.

Please keep in mind that recycling is your least preferred option. Reducing the generation of waste so there is no waste left to recycle would be the ideal. Make it your goal. Also keep in mind the concept of "cycle" in the term "recycle". For there to be a complete cycle, the things you send to be recycled must come back to you. So, look for recycled content products whenever you buy, otherwise you are not truly recycling.