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The Waste Hierarchy
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Reduce or Eliminate
The most effective strategy is to not use something at all! Not using means no waste, and none of all the upstream effort made to produce raw materials, process form and deliver them. If you can’t do without completely, at least try to reduce your use.
You can relate to reduction through simple examples: food, diy materials, turning off taps and lights… One example at home and in the office is the use of paper. You may be using recycled paper, but even so, our usage is going up since it is so easy with modern IT to create and print documents before they’ve been checked for errors, or simply for convenience. But being more careful with printing can have a substantial impact. It also reduces consumption of toner and wear and tear on the printers, which all adds up.
You may have heard about refilling your toner cartridges (see later section on reuse) which has an impact on materials and energy in manufacture. (This is often called the embodied energy.) But being careful with your paper can offer way more benefits: See this analysis of the impacts of a one-use toner cartridge provided by Lexmark:
LCA 2008 study on the Lexmark X646dte laser printer prepared by BIO IS. Study complies to ISO 14040 and 14044.