You are familiar with the concept of ‘recycle, reuse, and repurpose’, right? Perhaps you are also familiar with the concept of life hacks. What if you could combine the two? What if your desire to recycle, reuse, then repurpose translated into a series of life hacks that completely changed your outlook? I have been there; I’ve done that.
‘Recycle, reuse, and repurpose’ are sometimes known as the three Rs of waste reduction. Recycling reduces waste. So does reusing and repurposing. As for life hacks, they are little tips and tricks that allow you to overcome some of life’s challenges. Note that not all life hacks are big deals. Most of them are pretty minor.
A Practical Example
A better way for me to explain all of this is to offer a practical example. So, I own a perfectly good laptop bag that was given to me roughly 25 years ago. It is still in pristine condition despite the fact that I use it regularly. Everything had been fine until a couple of months ago when the shoulder strap broke. Actually, it was cut when it inadvertently made contact with a sharp edge.
At any rate, I wasn’t about to toss the bag and buy a new one. It is a great bag! With the exception of the strap, it was still in a near perfect condition. So I sat down and started thinking of a solution. I eventually remembered that I had a couple of cam straps I hadn’t used in a while.
They are Rollercam cam straps, but the brand really isn’t important. What is important is that I took one of the unused straps, threaded it through the rubber shoulder piece I took off the old strap, and then created a loop by running the open end through the cam buckle. I instantly had a replacement strap for my laptop bag.
My recycle, reuse, and repurpose mindset was combined with an easy life hack to keep a perfectly good laptop bag out of the landfill. I saved some money and gave new life to an unused cam strap at the same time.
We Throw Too Many Things Away
I am a big life hack kind of guy. I like figuring out different ways to do things. I like pushing the envelope. With that in mind, I am also a huge proponent of the recycle, reuse, and repurpose mindset. It seems to me that the three Rs and life hacks constitute a marriage made in heaven.
This is important to me because I feel like we throw too many things away. Like you, I have driven through the neighborhood on trash day and found myself amazed at the things sitting at the curb. A few decades ago, we were more inclined to fix things. We were more inclined to come up with our own life hacks rather than going out and buying new things all the time.
So what has changed? Consumer prices. Two decades of access to cheap consumer goods has changed us. Replacing broken things doesn’t cost much money, so that’s what we do. It is one of the few aspects of modern life I am not plussed about.
Hack Away, Dear Friends
If you share my appreciation of the three Rs, let me also encourage you to embrace the life hack principal. In fact, go hack away. Combining life hacks with the three Rs can result in some amazing things. Even if you are never the envy of the neighborhood, you will sleep well at night knowing that you are reducing your contributions to the waste stream.
