Conserve, Reuse, Recycle

Semrau's point is revealed in the sentence "Reuse provides maximum function for given material and energy input."

This sentence as many other parts of this article hold  a lot of information that doesn't make sense until you read further into the essay.  The information is intentionally withheld from the readers.

This absolutely helps the intent of this essay by taking what would otherwise be a normal recycling topic and then engaging you to a much deeper level on the subject.  Conserve, reuse, and recycle are the key words of the article with reuse being the author's favorite of the three. 

In discussing these, he is not referring to cans, bottles, and reusuable shopping bags.  He is talking about donating his body to the Harvard Medical School.

Once you realize that this is what he is doing, this particular writing strategy proves to be very effective.  As he states in the third paragraph that most of us have things we don't or won't use and that someone else can make use of these things.  He is reusing his body when he can no longer be of use on Earth.  He is fulfilling his dream of going to Medical School while helping others.