Barry Commoner Quotes

The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.

Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.

If we have any hope of finding ways for seven billion people to live well on planet with finite resources, we have to learn to use our resources efficiently. Plastic bags are neither efficient nor environmentally friendly.

One of my big pet peeves is single-use plastic bags. I think it's one of the stupidest ideas in the world.

We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms — from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use.

Waste is only waste if we waste it.

In my lifetime, I want to see humanity start being conscious of our waste, the things we buy, and how we can reuse and recycle things. I want people to live harmoniously with our planet. I hope everybody wakes up and appreciates life.

Reusing and recycling our materials is the most important thing we can do.

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

I'm a strong proponent of green tech for anyone who can afford it, having spent the last 40 years working toward achieving a smaller and smaller eco-impact for myself.

Even clingfilm - if it's gone over a salad bowl, take it off, use it again. I wash out carrier bags; I save brown paper from parcels. I save string; I save ribbons. I separate all my bits and pieces.

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.

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.

Reducing and reusing take nothing more than a rethink on the way we shop, and using our imagination with the things that we might once have considered junk.

For Pocketbook Environmentalists, financial savings are the primary motivator. However Pocketbook Environmentalists are changing the face of the market and the planet for the better by demanding that going green saves you money.

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.

Making choices that improve things for all of us on the planet is an act of compassion, a simple act we can do any time we go shopping.

My father was in the paper recycling business back before they called it recycling.

Not everything needs to be recycled.

I like to take out the recycling because I actually feel like I'm doing something.

The plastic bottle we're throwing away every day still stays there. And if we show that to people, then we can also promote some behavioral change.

Would you like all of your Facebook friends to sift through your trash? A group of designers from Britain and Germany think that you might. Meet BinCam: a 'smart' trash bin that aims to revolutionize the recycling process.

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, and the by-product from one food can be perfect for making another.