The Differences Between Reusable & Renewable Resources

As the environmentally friendly "green" movement continues to infiltrate popular culture and opinion, issues like the availability, acquisition and sustainability of resources have become quotidian talking points. One important distinction to make when discussing such matters is that between renewable and reusable resources. Although these categories may both come up during a single discussion, several important differences exist between the types of resources that constitute each.

Origin

• Generally speaking, renewable resources tend to include ones that are naturally occurring. Examples of renewable resources include plants such as trees and crops, substances like oxygen and water and natural phenomena like sunlight and wind. Reusable resources, on the other hand, are often man-made. You can reuse packaging like cardboard boxes, for example, even after you've thrown away the items originally stored in them. Any man-made material you can recycle--metal, glass or paper, for example--also falls into the reusable category, because you can reuse the raw material to make something else.

Replenishment

• Renewable resources are, by definition, ones that replenish themselves without human intervention. If you examine resources without regard to time frame, you'll find that most are eventually renewable. Fossil fuels such as oil and coal, for example, renew themselves over millions of years due to the gradual compression of plant remains. Practically speaking, however, these resources are non-renewable--if humans were to use all available oil, for example, it would take hundreds of generations for it to replenish. Reusable resources, however, aren't necessarily renewable. You can reuse a plastic bag dozens of times, but plastic is neither something that occurs nor replenishes itself naturally.

Disposal

• A further difference between reusable and renewable resources is the method by which you dispose of them. In many cases, renewable resources simply vanish into thin air. Unused solar and wind energy, for example, will keep shining or blowing as sun or wind. Timber and other wood products will eventually decompose and become part of the soil, as will unused animal and plant matter. When a plastic bag, cardboard box or other reusable man-made material has reached the limits of its usability, however, it will end it up in a landfill or other designated receptacle for trash disposal.