R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes

Our entire economy is based on waste. We produce stuff we don’t need… How far is this going to go? I have a 5 word answer for you: Zero waste equals zero commerce.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Make no mistake: business forces, if used long-sightedly, are the tools for leveraging new consumer behaviors, new and smarter ways of production, and for accelerating the transition to a sustainable world.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

I imagine a future with no waste; material innovations have already become exponentially more vast, and I do think the future needs to be cradle to cradle. If designed properly, one product could be used for many years before needing to be recycled, or its components reused.

Having one foot in design and the other in sustainable and social projects, I hear this question quite often: 'Why does the world need another chair?' My answer is that the world needs another chair/bicycle/car or any new product for that matter, like the world needs another book.

There is no such thing as a Fourth Industrial Revolution with 9 billion thriving co-citizens in the world if it is accomplished on linear economic principles. We need a transition to circular economic principles and practice.

The economy of the future has been aligned with the climate agenda. Even the competitiveness of companies will depend on how resource efficient they are.

Like all major transitions in human history, the shift from a linear to a circular economy will be a tumultuous one. It will feature heroes and pioneers, naysayers and obstacles, and moments of victory and doubt. If we persevere, however, we will put our economy back on a path of growth and sustainability.

We can't think in terms of designing products that we throw over the wall to customers, but instead, we need to design products that are upgradable and maintainable and that can be mined for materials and components that can be reused.

Resource efficiency is the wrong metric. We should use nature as the measure, using nature's wisdom as a template for our economic systems.

Addressing the climate and biodiversity crises requires us to radically change our economic models, moving away from economic growth as the over-riding measure of progress and moving instead towards improving health and wellbeing for people and nature. That means a different economic model taking us towards a sustainable economy.

The way we use technology is completely wasteful. We duplicate many vacuum cleaners, tools; In the future we will make the best of equipment and make it available to everyone.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

Power naturally and necessarily follows property.

Using less of the Earth’s resources more efficiently and productively in a circular economy and making the transition from carbon-based fuels to renewable energies are defining features of the emerging economic paradigm. In the new era, we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere.

Sustainable development: Meeting present needs without compromising the stock of natural resources remaining for future generations. In terms of buildings, it implies resource efficiency, minimum energy use, flexibility and long life

We are completely saddled and bridled, and... the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where it will guide.

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold... has its natural and its market price.

The Master knows better than to exhaust His servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.

But now that foreign steel, and foreign cars, are moving into the United States in increased quantities at relatively low prices, the United States can no longer keep its business system fluid by inflation.

If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products.

Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.

Natural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways.

If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.