I suppose this can also go under metatopics
In order to avoid the edit wars, I'll leave this here. But I moved it from materials because some aspects of the 4Rs extend beyond materials. I don't consider energy a "material", and it's quite a stretch for me to consider "water" or even "air" as a material, and yet "reduce" and "reuse" of water make sense, and "rethink" of all of these make sense.
As a compromise, I'll also put it under the Meta concepts category. --CurtB 21:24, 18 December 2006 (PST)
- Hi Curt, I think traditionally the 4R's, as a package, have been applied more to material waste management, especially because of the "Recycling" component as opposed to water conservation, water reuse and energy conservation. But multiple categorization is definitely in our general plan. --Lonny 22:50, 18 December 2006 (PST)
Alternative name?
I tried Googling the 4Rs (I don't remember hearing the term), and there doesn't seem to be any kind of agreed definition. Could be "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renew," or the last is sometimes "Rot", and its used in quite different ways as well.
Is there a more widely known term we can use instead? Or just stick to each component as its own category, and have 4Rs as a topic page? --Chriswaterguy 11:13, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
does this need to be a cat?
Seems a bit extreme to be a category in its own right. Possibly little to suggest it should even be a page. Joeturner 03:41, 16 April 2013 (PDT)
- I like having a mainspace page on the topic, as for any term which is used in sustainability education - but categories should be well known or self-explanatory terms, IMO. How about we merge or rename? --Chriswaterguy 05:14, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- Maybe in a glossary of terms cat? I've never heard of this term, I don't know how widely it is used. Joeturner 05:23, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- Wikipedia has an entire contents navigation structure for glossaries - Wikipedia:Portal:Contents/Glossaries. Creating a collection of topical glossary pages certainly would be a good way to eliminate lots of "minor" pages without losing the content. --RichardF 08:11, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- Example of a glossary format:
- Wikipedia has an entire contents navigation structure for glossaries - Wikipedia:Portal:Contents/Glossaries. Creating a collection of topical glossary pages certainly would be a good way to eliminate lots of "minor" pages without losing the content. --RichardF 08:11, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
WWWWWWWWWW
This is a glossary of something-related terms. Something is...
A
B
- Biofuel: Solid, liquid or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material and is distinguished from fossil fuels, which are derived from long dead biological material.
See also
WWWWWWWWWW
- --RichardF 08:26, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
Wikipedia:Reduce, Reuse, Recycle --> Wikipedia:Waste hierarchy
"The waste hierarchy is a classification of waste management options in order of their environmental impact, such as: reduction, reuse, recycling and recovery."
With cats there: Wikipedia:Category:Waste management concepts, Wikipedia:Category:Industrial ecology, Wikipedia:Category:Reuse, Wikipedia:Category:Recycling & Wikipedia:Category:Waste reduction.
Here: Category:Waste management concepts, Category:Industrial ecology, Category:Reuse, Category:Recycling & Category:Waste reduction.
Waste management here is a stub article under Construction and materials, just like this article. How much sense does that make?
"Wikipedia:Waste management is the collection, transport, processing or disposal, managing and monitoring of waste materials. The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and the process is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management is a distinct practice from Wikipedia:resource recovery which focuses on delaying the rate of consumption of natural resources.:"
Cat: Category:Waste management.
"Wikipedia:Resource recovery (Resource recovery) is the selective extraction of disposed materials for a specific next use, such as recycling, composting or energy generation. The aim of the resource recovery is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products, delay the consumption of virgin natural resources, and to generate the minimum amount of waste."
Cats: Category:Sustainability, Category:Waste management concepts --> Category:Waste management
If I were going to clean up this cat ;-), I would organize the 4Rs concept-related articles around Category:Waste management and build around that broader concept. --RichardF 06:04, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- See, the 3Rs I have heard of. The only context where I've heard of 4Rs (displayed like this) is where incineration companies are promoting energy recovery as a 'green' energy source, which I think is essentially just greenwash. I think the idea of this as a heirarchy is probably bunk now anyway - not-using-in-the-first-place is far above the others, and there may well be scrambling around to determine whether recycling is better than reuse etc in a given circumstance. The only reason I can see this for being on Appropedia is to point out how originally green concepts are used for greenwash. Joeturner 06:15, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- Four "R"s were mentioned here: "The waste hierarchy is a classification of waste management options in order of their environmental impact, such as: reduction, reuse, recycling and recovery." That tells me discourse is occurring on the subject. History on discourse also is a useful topic in helping to understand why one conceptual approach might be favored over another in application. Describing discourse is not dogma, but prescribing a selected approach out of context starts moving in that direction. The 4Rs page likely could be redirected to a broader page, like Waste management, where the related concepts could be presented, with pros, cons, historical context, current practices, and related projects. I think that's one of the ways topical articles and outlines can be used to help better organize and prioritize the content here. --RichardF 07:51, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- I agree, though the problem is that the thing is not as cut and dried as the above suggests - others have already inferred on this talkpage that the last R should be rotting, renewal or rethink. There seem to be sources which suggest all of these alternatives. I'm not suggesting it should not be discussed, I'm just pointing out that I don't believe it is really an agreed or accepted term, for the very reason that there is major disagreement around whether incineration should ever be part of the waste hierarchy. As a term, it makes more sense to me to discuss the issue as the waste heirarchy rather than the 4Rs (and then to discuss the meaning of the 4Rs inline) than to have this as a page/cat because I don't believe we're ever likely to get many visitors looking specifically for a 4Rs page or cat. Waste heirarchy doesn't even seem to exist, as far as I can tell.
- Interestingly, the wikipedia page on waste heirarchy talks of the 3Rs and then other forms of waste disposal. I think that outside of incineration companies and municipalities, this is the most common form. I don't really think that the 4Rs is a real concept. Joeturner 08:12, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- I propose:
- 4Rs be directed to Waste management with the content presented & explained there.
- This category be deleted.
- Lots of glossaries get developed on interesting topics!
- Use outlines, Indexes and other types of contents lists when available, to help organize glossaries.
- Redirect "minor" pages to the relevant glossary and use an interwiki linkW to offer more see-also detail than the definition in the glossary.
- --RichardF 08:33, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- I ported an environmental science glossary from wikipedia Glossary_of_sustainability_terms to see how many pages here it would include. Maybe this is too general? What do you think Joeturner 09:47, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- I propose:
- Cool! Personally, I don't think it's too general. Something like this helps me see the scope of Appropedia vs. Wikipedia. Adding the interwiki links lets readers follow topics as they choose. It also helps contributors decide what could be useful additions. --RichardF 10:29, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
"This category currently contains no pages or media." I propose deleting it. --RichardF 16:57, 17 April 2013 (PDT)
- Agreed - delete but move this discussion somewhere. (Subpage of A:VP? Or leave it here and link it from VP?) --Chriswaterguy 02:49, 26 April 2013 (PDT)