Make the Three R's a way of life.

Last week, we received an email about our organisation's "Going Green" initiative and what
each one of us could do to prevent Global Warming. This resulted in a flurry of emails flying across the Chennai mailing list with people coming up with all sorts of 'ideas', which they
claimed would be their contribution to this end :

- Some said they would avoid personal transport (bike/car) and use public transport.
- Another guy said he won't use paper cups anymore and instead use a water bottle.
- Many offered to setup or join car pools.
- Some would switch off monitors, conference room lights etc, when not in use.

And so on and so forth...

I am not doubting the sincerity behind these ideas. But, only wondering why it needs us to
be prompted by either our organisation or Al Gore (via his documentary - An Inconvenient truth) to do something which should come naturally to us.

The way I do it (and have been doing for years) is to look at everything as a resource which
is valuable and in many cases non-replenishable. So, to start with, I should take only that
much of a resource which I need for my use, then ensure that I consume it without wasting
and if it is something that can be re-used or recycled, go for it. So, for me, water, food, fuel, electricity, paper, etc are all resources that need to be used judiciously.

Also I make no distinction between resources that I pay for or which are being paid for by
others - a resource is a resource, as simple as that. So, if I see a tap / faucet at the office restroom not closed properly, I just go ahead and close it, even though I am not technically paying for the wasted water. Same goes for any lights in the conference rooms that are
burning with no one in the room. It goes without saying that I do the same at home too,
with the bonus being that I save on my water/electricity bills.

This approach is known as the Three R's philosophy, with each R standing for Reduce,
Reuse and Recycle. Instead of just thinking of individual ways to make a difference to the environment, if we embrace the 3 R's, this becomes a way of life, resulting not only in the
world becoming a better place, but also leading to enormous amounts of savings for us.

As someone wise said so very rightly, "We did not inherit the earth from our
ancestors; we've only borrowed it from our children".

Let us atleast leave it as we found it.