????You'd need to be from another planet to not have noticed the worldwide drive to persuade people to live a greener life and do more to protect the environment for the future. Many people are still at a loss though, as to what they can do to help. The often heard mantra of 'reduce, reuse, recycle' sums up the action everyone and anyone can take to make their life a little greener and a bit more environmentally friendly.

The modern lifestyle, particularly in the west, creates massive amounts of waste and emissions. The 'reduce, reuse, recycle' movement is an attempt to get people to consider their actions and lifestyles in terms of their impact on the world around them and to make small changes to encourage big improvements.

By reducing the amount of waste you produce through the way you live your life, you can reduce your need for services like landfill and incineration. This lowers the amount of pollution buried in the ground or released into the air in the long term. For huge populations, it's easy to see how many small changes in the way a population considers the waste it produces can add up to big changes on a continental or global scale, if only everyone would do their own small bit.

Reusing items wherever possible can and will reduce consumer demand for manufacturing and manufacturing processes that may use up vital resources like fossil fuels or may even be polluting the environment. Reuse of items is one of the ways to turn a green approach to living to your own financial advantage. Every item or product you can use more than once will save you money through not buying additional items.

Recycling materials will reduce the demand for new, virgin materials, with less resulting demand for natural resources like wood, plastics, metal, or fossil fuels. Some of these resources take huge amounts of energy to produce and long term decline in demand is needed worldwide to decrease the associated pollution and carbon emissions and to avoid exhaustion of the supply entirely in some cases.

The drive to cut the impact human beings are having on the global environment is not something that can be achieved by big corporations or governments alone. Yes, they can provide the means to assist and legislation to mandate certain types of behaviour, but the only way the world will be able to reduce, reuse and recycle, and feel the benefit of doing so, will be through the collective efforts of everyone and the realisation that the environmental impact of modern life has to be addressed and changed for the better.

Take a look around your own home. There are many practical ways to reduce, reuse or recycle objects and materials. If your local authority is rolling out recycling as part of its refuse collection regime, don't rail against it - embrace it. Look for ways to pass on good items that you may have finished with so others can use them. Actively seek out ways of producing less waste through more intelligent and organised shopping and being selective about what you buy and how it may be packaged. Increase your own level of awareness and read up on how you can contribute to a better environment one step at a time.