Hilary Benn Quotes

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.

Recycling is an area where jobs could be created at low cost. Green collar workers. That's not very sexy.

There's this very vulnerable planet of ours with finite resources. Architects and designers have, I think, a fair responsibility for conserving energy and materials, and making things durable.

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

We face a simple choice. Either we go back to the days when everything was disposable and landfill dumps consumed our countryside at an increasing pace, or we recognise that we have limited resources and need to use them wisely and sustainably.

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

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 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.

Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash.

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

The cheap and easy days of waste disposal are over.

Designers must be increasingly sensitive to our Earth's dwindling resources. It is our responsibility.

We don't want to be paper champs.

Seoul will build more resource recovery facilities and establish new recycling facilities with the aim of achieving zero landfills of domestic waste.

We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption.

I try to leave a light footprint. I'm involved with Global Green, which aims to educate people about sustainable building and the greening of schools. I try to be aware about the consumption of unnecessary things in a consumptive culture.

I'm an environmentalist; I recycle.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

When I joined Ford, in the late 1970s, I felt strongly we could not forever be a huge user of natural resources without there being consequences. But I was alone in my thinking in those days.

We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.

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

It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.