Ruth Ann Minner Quotes

We can't have landfills forever, and we can't ask others to accept our trash.

I'm mad keen on recycling because I'm worried about the next generation and where all this waste we're producing is going. It has to stop. I wash out my plastic containers and recycle envelopes, everything I possibly can.

Not everything needs to be recycled.

We can no longer throw our waste away because there is no away.

We need to throw away less, recycle a lot more and turn much of the rest into energy.

We need to address our Nation's mounting garbage problem by generating less garbage, particularly paper waste.

Don't forget, we have a disposal problem.

The cheap and easy days of waste disposal are over.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

After all, does it make sense to be chucking things like glass, paper, cardboard, wood, metals, plastics, and food waste into holes in the ground? No, it doesn't; especially when someone will pay you good money to take them off your hands or, in the case of wood and food waste, when you can turn them into renewable energy.

I'm an environmentalist; I recycle.

If you're not buying recycled products, you're not really recycling.

When you have all these traces of trash moving around, you can ask yourself how can we make the system more efficient. Then we can make better decisions. And perhaps we will not throw away the plastic bottles that go every day to the dump.

The day we dispose of the idea of disposability will be a great one for the planet.

I think any opportunity you have to be green, whether it's in business or in everyday life, you should take it.

Most of the time, I'm here in Michigan and I'm taking out the garbage every Monday.

We can turn your bottles back into oil. We can burn it to make energy. Our we can put it in a landfill. There’s a green spectrum. And a cost spectrum. The most green is the most expensive.

We don't want to be paper champs.

The waste products in Earth's crust are also the human in this expanded, spectral sense. One's garbage doesn't go 'away' - it just goes somewhere else.

I'm a recycling obsessive.

To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our "garbage index" - that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system.

My main issue is sustainability of the Earth, and protection of those animals and people who dwell here.

Consuming less means throwing away less, while reusing things actually helps to save the planet as well as the pennies.

A big ethical question is what happens after people stop using the device. Does it degrade the environment? Could it have been designed so it would actually be good for the environment?

In Los Angeles, I drive a hybrid and live in a very simple home. Anything you do from carrying a canteen of water to starting a recycling program in your office makes a difference. Reusing what you already have has always been green - from clothes to boxes to glass jars from the supermarket.