OTTAWA -- Just as Canadians thought they'd finally mastered recycling, along comes yet another trend in waste management and it's one experts hope consumers will be quick to catch onto as landfills swell.

It's called precycling, the latest green buzzword that is gaining in popularity during a time of economic belt-tightening and heightened environmental awareness.

The idea is to take a step back and reduce waste by making a conscious effort not to buy it in the first place; for example purchasing in bulk to reduce packaging, or choosing products that can be recycled as opposed to those that can't - like Styrofoam. It's standing in the deli at lunch and electing to have a sandwich wrapped in a tiny bit of brown paper instead of the salad bar take-away in a large plastic or Styrofoam box.

The end result is to reduce waste by avoiding items that create garbage and, in doing so, eliminate a need for them.

Daily precycling habits could include simple tasks such as attaching notes to e-mails asking people not to print the page or asking the mail carrier not to put flyers in the mailbox, while a long-term goal could be the sci-fi idea of the paperless office. Paying bills online and putting fruits and vegetables directly into a grocery cart instead of using those single-use disposable plastic bags are other examples.

Kim McKinnon, vice-president of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors says until consumer demand wanes for the produce bags, grocery stores will continue to supply them.

Experts advise the would-be precycler to avoid flashy yogurt-in-a-tub type packaging and instead portion bulk products into reusable containers they can tote to work or school. The question, say waste management experts, that people should ask themselves, particularly as they weather the global financial storm, is "do I really need this item?"

Shannon Betts, a waste resource analyst with the Halifax Regional Municipality, says with landfills across the country in crisis, people need to re-examine how much stuff they consume.

"A lot of it is common sense and just not buying things that you don't need - like paper towel - and not being wasteful. Precycling is a term we use to lump the 3 Rs - reduce, reuse, recycle - all those concepts together," she said.

"My mother will come over to my house and ask me 'where are your paper towels?' and I tell her we don't buy them. I say use a cloth."

The idea of precycling is not new. The term was coined in the late 80s as part of a waste awareness campaign in Berkeley, Calif. However the idea seems to be resurfacing, evident in the growing number of campaigns to rid dumps of take-away products such as plastic bags and water bottles.

Betts said while more consumers are becoming eco-aware, more still needs to be done.

"It's great to see all these people in the grocery store bringing their reusable cloth bags but then you go into the produce section and you see people buying one green pepper and putting it into a plastic bag," she said.

According to figures from Annie Leonard, an expert in international sustainability who has spent more than 20 years investigating factories and dumps around the world, and the Worldwatch Institute, it takes 70 cans of garbage to make the junk that goes into just one can of trash.

Leonard's 20-minute film, The Story of Stuff, has been making waves on the Internet and social networking websites like Facebook because of its gritty look at the worldwide social and environmental damage caused by producing and consuming too much.

It's that detrimental impact that concerns students at Lord Elgin elementary school in London, Ont., who have embarked on a program called litterless lunches.

No plastic wrap, foil, plastic bags, single-serving containers or pre-packaged foods - these are the guidelines for a litterless lunch as students made a game of weighing their lunches before and after the program.

Without the campaign the students averaged eight pounds in one day of snacks and lunch - or 40 pounds a week. On top of that, students found they had 10 pounds a week of recycling.

After trying their hand at packing litterless lunches the students reduced waste by half - with an average of only two pounds of garbage and recycling per day.

Joe Sheik, principal of Lord Elgin says by using these calculations, one child taking disposable lunches to school for one year creates an average of 67 pounds of garbage.

"We looked at your typical lunch with a lot of waste products in it and maybe not as healthy, and then we looked at a litterless lunch and it is actually way healthier and way cheaper."

Sheik said the kids added up the cost of a typical pre-packaged lunch using prices from Price Chopper including crackers and meat, Fruit Roll-ups, a small chocolate bar and cookies, for a cost $4.30, and then compared that with a lunch consisting of a whole-wheat bread sandwich, veggies and yogurt, which only cost $1.07.

"(The kids) become aware from the lessons that it's all about the ecological footprint and that we're making a lighter footprint with this," said Sheik.

The latest Statistics Canada numbers show a six-per-cent increase in per capita waste disposed in 2006 over 2004. Over the same time, the rate of diversion of materials from landfills was at 22 per cent.

Shirley Thompson, with the University of Manitoba Natural Resources Institute says recycling does divert some but it hasn't made any difference in reducing the amount of waste going to landfills because of over-consumption and excess packaging.

Paul Peacock, a British author who wrote a book on the subject called Precycle!, defines the practice as "living the way we used to."