The three Rs of waste management strategies in order of importance or desirability. Reduce, reuse, recycle is the guiding principle behind waste minimization. The goal of this waste hierarchy is to obtain the maximum practical benefits from products while generating the least amount of waste. Lately, another R concept has been added in waste reduction: Re-think, which entails thinking of new production processes that do not rely on too much raw or natural material to begin with. This relatively new concept involves source reduction.