Reduce, Reuse, Repudiate 减少、重用、拒绝

While  recycling campaigns can help limit what heads to the landfill,  scientists are now saying that it's masked the glaring problem of  over-production and de-emphasized other waste reduction strategies that  are far more sustainable.
虽然回收活动可以帮助限制进入垃圾填埋场的东西，但科学家们现在表示，它掩盖了生产过剩的明显问题，并淡化了其他更具可持续性的废物减少策略。

In a new essay for The Conversation,  an interdisciplinary group of researchers out of the University of  Virginia that's been studying the psychology of waste found that many  people over-emphasize the recycling aspect of the waste management  industry's "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" slogan. The result, they say, is a  major backfiring as the public has come to mistakenly consider recycling  a get-out-of-jail-free card, confusing which goods are actually  recyclable in the first place and ignoring the growing waste production  catastrophe.
在《对话》的一篇新文章中，弗吉尼亚大学的一个跨学科研究小组一直在研究废物心理学，他们发现许多人过分强调废物管理行业“减少、再利用、回收”口号的回收方面。他们说，结果是适得其反，因为公众错误地考虑回收出狱卡，首先混淆了哪些商品实际上是可回收的，并忽视了日益严重的废物生产灾难。

In  a series of experiments, the UV researchers first asked participants  first to list "reduce," "reuse," and "recycle" by order of efficacy  — the correct answer being the same one in the old slogan — finding that  a whopping 78 percent got it wrong. In a second experiment, the  researchers had participants use a computer program to virtually "sort"  waste into recycling, compost, and landfill bins. Unfortunately, the  outcome of that survey was even more stark, with many incorrectly  putting non-recyclable waste, such as plastic bags and lightbulbs, into  the virtual recycle bin.
在一系列实验中，紫外线研究人员首先要求参与者按照功效顺序列出“减少”、“再利用”和“回收”——正确答案与旧口号中的答案相同——发现高达   78%搞错了。在第二个实验中，研究人员让参与者使用计算机程序将废物虚拟地“分类”到回收箱、堆肥箱和垃圾填埋箱中。不幸的是，该调查的结果更加严峻，许多人错误地将塑料袋和灯泡等不可回收垃圾放入虚拟回收箱。

Cause and Effect 因果

While over-emphasizing or getting the recycling protocol wrong is an issue on its own, its downstream effects have been devastating as microplastics from consumer waste continue to pollute our oceans, land masses, and bodies — and as greenhouse gases from the production of all this stuff keep throttling our planet.
虽然过度强调或错误地实施回收协议本身就是一个问题，但其下游影响却是毁灭性的，因为消费废物中的微塑料继续污染我们的海洋、陆地和身体，而且所有这些产品的生产都产生温室气体这些东西一直在限制我们的星球。

While lots of governmental bodies are, as the researchers note, attempting to stem and even ban  the proliferation of single-use plastic goods such as plastic straws  and bags, the industries responsible for creating those landfill-bound  items keep making more and more of them, and even their own mitigation strategies are voluntary.
正如研究人员指出的那样，尽管许多政府机构正在试图阻止甚至禁止一次性塑料制品（例如塑料吸管和塑料袋）的扩散，但负责制造这些垃圾填埋场物品的行业仍在生产越来越多的此类物品，甚至他们自己的缓解策略也是自愿的。

The  onus to reduce, reuse, and recycle ends up falling on consumers — who,  as the aforementioned studies show, aren't as well-trained on how to do  them as we should be. It's a status quo that does little to tackle the  global waste crisis and ends up using a lot of logistical and worker power to boot.
减少、再利用和回收的责任最终落到了消费者身上——正如上述研究表明的那样，消费者并没有像我们应该的那样接受过良好的培训。这种现状对解决全球垃圾危机无济于事，最终会消耗大量的后勤和工人力量。