In University, I was a graphic design intern at North Carolina’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Division of Environmental Assistance and Outreach.

My first foray into Work with a Purpose: environmental education.

I visited recycling centers and the dump; helped teach home composting practices; volunteered at the State Fair talking with people about recycling in North Carolina; volunteered at Hopsotch Music Festival to ensure consumables made their way into the right containers; and wrote/designed/recorded/animated an educational video on how material recycling facilities—MRFs—work.

Everything is a remix

Alongside learning to write more succinctly, scripts for spoken word, and routinely, recycling content is another skill I have to practice. So:

I focused this weekend’s posts on remixing past content I’ve written before.

Writing continuously, over time, you develop a compendium of content that can be remixed, recycled, and re-used over and over again. It’s been on my mind quite often as I look at intersections of content creation, accessible content practices, content marketing, and platform reach.

One unexpected insight from this weekend’s practice was in its iteration: discovering reduce, reuse, recycle works just as well for content as it does in waste management.

Three Principles of Writing Online; Waste Management Edition

By applying these principles, writers can improve conten writing efficiency, save time in content creation, extend lifespan & reach of their content, and create a more sustanable & organized approach to writing online.

Reduce

• Minimize unnecessary content and focus on quality over quantity

• Cut down on redundant or repetitive information in writing

• Streamline content to make it more concise and impactful

Reuse:

• Repurpose existing content for different platforms or formats

• Update and refresh old content to give it new life

• Use templates or frameworks to create consistent content more efficiently

Recycle:

• Break down longer pieces of content into smaller, more digestible formats

• Combine multiple related pieces of content to create comprehensive guides or resources

• Adapt content from one medium to another (e.g., turning a blog post into a video script)

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  As a bonus, here’s the animation I made 13-years ago; 201k views strong.