"Solid wastes" are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem.
-- Jimmy Carter

We are not to throw away those things which can benefit our neighbor. Goods are called good because they can be used for good: they are instruments for good, in the hands of those who use them properly.
-- Clement of Alexandria

"Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem."
--Barry Commoner

The ever-mounting glut of waste materials is characteristic by-product of modern "consumer society." It might even be argued that capitalism's continual need to find of generate markets means that disposibility and waste have become the spine of the system. To consume means, literally, "to destroy or expend," and in the garbage crisis we confront the underlying truth of a society in which enormous productive capacities and market forces have harnessed human needs and desires, without regard to the long or even short-term future of life on the planet.
-- Stuart Ewen

"Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours."
~ Denis Hayes

The case for recycling is strong. The bottom line is clear. Recycling requires a trivial amount of our time. Recycling saves money and reduces pollution. Recycling creates more jobs than landfilling or incineration. And a largely ignored but very important consideration, recycling reduces our need to dump our garbage in someone else's backyard.
-- David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
-- New England proverb

"What we are living with is the result of human choices and it can be changed by making better, wiser choices."
-- Robert Redford

I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. -- Mother Teresa

"You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled."
-- Dhyani Ywahoo

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

— Mahatma Gandhi

"Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations."

— Jean Paul Richter

"We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself."

— Father Thomas Berry

"Each one [of the Earth's 5 million invertebrate species] plays a role in its ecosystem. It's like we're tearing the cogs out of a great machine. The machine might work after you tear out ten cogs, but what happens when you tear out a hundred?"

— Scott Black

"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."

— John Sawhill

"In the long term, economic sustainability depends on ecological sustainability."

— “America’s Living Oceans” 

"In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change."

— Daniel Howden

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come."

— Chinese proverb

"To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves."

— Mahatma Gandhi

"The American lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. It uses more phosphates than India and puts on more poisons than any other form of agriculture."

— Bill Mollison

"Among the environmental trends undermining our future are shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species, and rising temperatures. The temperature increases bring crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, more-intense droughts, more forest fires, and, of course, ice melting. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize."

— Lester Brown

"Our choices at all levels—individual, community, corporate and government—affect nature. And they affect us."

— David Suzuki

"The consensus is that the threat to our health and security comes [not from natural resource depletion but rather] from the byproducts of production and consumption of non-renewable resources."

— Stephen D'Esposito

"Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves."

— Rachel Carson

"That's human nature. Nobody does anything until it's too late."

— Michael Crichton

"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"

— Robert Redford

"What we do today, right now, will have an accumulated effect on all of our tomorrows."

— Alexandra Stoddard

"Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves."

— Jonas Salk

"Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate.... It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer. The unprecedented increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, together with other human influences on climate over the past century and those anticipated for the future, constitute a real basis for concern."

— American Geophysical Union [2003]

"We know the science, we see the threat, and we know the time for action is now."

— Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

"The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need; more are being developed. And as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait."

— Al Gore

"I think that the 10-year experiment with genetically engineered foods and genetically engineered animals and drugs is nearly over. We're going to look back at a certain point and say, 'Oh my god, we wasted an entire decade fighting about this when the debate should have been about chemical-intensive agriculture vs. organic agriculture.'"

— Ronnie Cummins

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them."

— Theodore Roosevelt

"When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves."

— Bobby McLeod

"Toxic chemicals in the home can be eliminated simply by making thoughtful choices in the supermarket after educating oneself about where the hazards are in common consumer products."

— Gary A. Davis and Em Turner

"We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism. Land can be healthy or sick, fertile or barren, rich or poor, lovingly nurtured or bled white. Our present attitudes and laws governing the ownership and use of land represent an abuse of the concept of private property.... Today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see and nobody calls the cops."

— Paul Brooks

"It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever."

— Jimmy Carter

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."

— John Muir

"However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat."

— Jacques Cousteau

"When you look at an apple, some people would say the non-organic apple is cheaper than the organic apple. But when you factor in what you're receiving in terms of vitamins, minerals, etc., the organic apple—on that basis—is cheaper than the non-organic apple."

— Jerry Kay

"There are 70 pesticides that are listed as known or probable carcinogens, based on animal testing. Of those 70, 44 are in use today, and 23 are used on our food."

— Gina Solomon

"Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours."
~ Denis Hayes

The case for recycling is strong. The bottom line is clear. Recycling requires a trivial amount of our time. Recycling saves money and reduces pollution. Recycling creates more jobs than landfilling or incineration. And a largely ignored but very important consideration, recycling reduces our need to dump our garbage in someone else's backyard.
-- David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
-- New England proverb

"What we are living with is the result of human choices and it can be changed by making better, wiser choices."
-- Robert Redford

I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. -- Mother Teresa

"You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled."
-- Dhyani Ywahoo

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

— Mahatma Gandhi

"Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations."

— Jean Paul Richter

"We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself."

— Father Thomas Berry

"Each one [of the Earth's 5 million invertebrate species] plays a role in its ecosystem. It's like we're tearing the cogs out of a great machine. The machine might work after you tear out ten cogs, but what happens when you tear out a hundred?"

— Scott Black

"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."

— John Sawhill

"In the long term, economic sustainability depends on ecological sustainability."

— “America’s Living Oceans” 

"In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change."

— Daniel Howden

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come."

— Chinese proverb

"To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves."

— Mahatma Gandhi

"The American lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. It uses more phosphates than India and puts on more poisons than any other form of agriculture."

— Bill Mollison

"Among the environmental trends undermining our future are shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species, and rising temperatures. The temperature increases bring crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, more-intense droughts, more forest fires, and, of course, ice melting. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize."

— Lester Brown

"Our choices at all levels—individual, community, corporate and government—affect nature. And they affect us."

— David Suzuki

"The consensus is that the threat to our health and security comes [not from natural resource depletion but rather] from the byproducts of production and consumption of non-renewable resources."

— Stephen D'Esposito

"Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves."

— Rachel Carson

"That's human nature. Nobody does anything until it's too late."

— Michael Crichton

"I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?"

— Robert Redford

"What we do today, right now, will have an accumulated effect on all of our tomorrows."

— Alexandra Stoddard

"Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves."

— Jonas Salk

"Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate.... It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer. The unprecedented increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, together with other human influences on climate over the past century and those anticipated for the future, constitute a real basis for concern."

— American Geophysical Union [2003]

"We know the science, we see the threat, and we know the time for action is now."

— Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

"The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need; more are being developed. And as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we must not wait."

— Al Gore

"I think that the 10-year experiment with genetically engineered foods and genetically engineered animals and drugs is nearly over. We're going to look back at a certain point and say, 'Oh my god, we wasted an entire decade fighting about this when the debate should have been about chemical-intensive agriculture vs. organic agriculture.'"

— Ronnie Cummins

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them."

— Theodore Roosevelt

"When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves."

— Bobby McLeod

"Toxic chemicals in the home can be eliminated simply by making thoughtful choices in the supermarket after educating oneself about where the hazards are in common consumer products."

— Gary A. Davis and Em Turner

"We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism. Land can be healthy or sick, fertile or barren, rich or poor, lovingly nurtured or bled white. Our present attitudes and laws governing the ownership and use of land represent an abuse of the concept of private property.... Today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see and nobody calls the cops."

— Paul Brooks

"It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever."

— Jimmy Carter

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."

— John Muir

"However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat."

— Jacques Cousteau

"When you look at an apple, some people would say the non-organic apple is cheaper than the organic apple. But when you factor in what you're receiving in terms of vitamins, minerals, etc., the organic apple—on that basis—is cheaper than the non-organic apple."

— Jerry Kay

"There are 70 pesticides that are listed as known or probable carcinogens, based on animal testing. Of those 70, 44 are in use today, and 23 are used on our food."

— Gina Solomon