Tim Cook Quotes

We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.

Single-use wearables are tough to sustain from a user perspective.

I would think twice about designing stuff for which there was no need and which didn't endure.

Loudspeakers should be made to be destroyed and... disposable.

We should make things that people don't want to throw away.

The throwaway economy that has been evolving over the last half-century is an aberration, now itself headed for the junk heap of history.

It does seem really hard to get consumers to do the right thing. It is stupid that we use two tons of steel, glass, and plastic to haul our sorry selves to the shopping mall. It's stupid that we put water in plastic bottles in Fiji and ship it here.

If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights.

I actually believe 'Sustainability', as a concept, is one of the arteries leading to the heart of so many of our cultural transitions at play today. And it's this concept which leads me to bottled water, and its multibillion dollar industry.

The principal and only way to make an heirloom product is to design something that people will need not just this year, but for the next 50 or 100 years.

We obviously want to produce things that people want. We are going to continue to do that in an environmentally responsible way, while still being aware of the physical, scientific, and practical issues that we have to deal with.

We've forgotten to respect clothes and consider who made them and where the material came from. We've been encouraged to buy things and, if we don't like them, bin them. When I grew up, we'd repair things or alter them.

I love beautiful things; I like having nice clothes, and I can appreciate why other people do - but I've also started to learn more about the impact of what we buy: how things are made, how much you buy and the quality of everything.

People mean well. But there is an unintended consequence of giving people bigger recycling bins and more opportunities to recycle—soon they want to recycle everything.

Clothing isn't disposable.

I just realized at least what I was doing was making a lot of stuff that nobody needed and pushing a consumerist society. So I went to do something else.

Cheap electronics are not built to be repaired. They're just used and then discarded.

The fashion business has to change. There's too much waste.

There's something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don't care for things anymore.

Design, by definition, is an eco-friendly activity, as its aim is to create objects which are meaningful and durable. Trends always cost resources, but a true designer creates wares which will remain relevant forever.

We do need a 'new economy,' but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

Recycling helps make people feel involved, and in some cases can be useful. Although you've got to do careful life history studies of what you're recycling. If all you're doing is recycling - if you've got three automobiles, and 10 children, and a 7,000-square-foot dot-com palace and second home up in the mountains that has to be heated - the recycling isn't making much difference.

Every conflict is emblematic of the throwaway culture.

Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.