Martin Freeman Quotes

I've also been documenting an unsustainable way of life. And you see in peoples' stories that this world of consumerism does not support the moral and spiritual values - of family and community - that people feel are most important. From an environmental perspective, the quest for more and more is not going to be possible on this planet. This is a historical documentation of an unsustainable path, and my hope is that this work allows people to think about their own agency and the potential for change.

Overconsumption is the mother of all environmental problems. For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial.

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

If the rest of the world aspires to our way of life ... we'll bury ourselves in waste.

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.

Today's trend ends up in tomorrow's landfill.

Buy less, choose well, make it last. Quality rather than quantity: That is true sustainability. If people only bought beautiful things rather than rubbish, we wouldn't have climate change!

Going to a junkyard is a sobering experience. There you can see the ultimate destination of almost everything we desired.

The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

We know that if you have $20 million, it's better to buy a van Gough print than it is buy an executive jet, from the point of view of the environment. But when you start getting down, it's like the recycling question: What are things we can really afford to do, and how much pleasure do we get out of them? We haven't even started to have that discussion, and it's getting awfully late.

The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.

I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.

We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.

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.

I'm an environmentalist; I recycle.

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

I've recently started composting in my apartment, which is quite an adventure.

Being green and clean is not just an aspiration but an action.

We live in a disposable society. It's easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name - we call it recycling.

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.

Here is a new car, a new iPhone. We buy. We discard. We buy again. In recent years, we've been doing it faster.

When we unwrap presents, I tend to sit there with a bin liner trying to collect up the wrapping paper and thinking about which pieces I can reuse and which I will recycle.

I have always been interested in garbage: What it says about us. What in there embarrasses us, and what we can't bear to part with. Where it goes and how much of it there is. How it endures. What it might be like to work with it every day.

Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.