• Reduce—Purchasing, consuming, and throwing away less. Source reduction actually prevents the generation of waste in the first place, making it the most preferred method of waste management. 

• Reuse—Reusing items by repairing, donating, or selling them. Reuse is even better than recycling because items do not have to be reprocessed before 

they can be used again. 

• Recycle—A series of activities that includes collect­ing recyclable materials that would otherwise be considered waste, sorting and processing recy­clables into raw materials such as fibers, and manu­facturing the raw materials into new products. Recycling prevents the need to harvest new raw materials from the Earth. 

• Buy Recycled—Purchasing products made of recy­cled materials

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