Alex Steffen Quotes

There is no such thing as waste. It is just a question of whether we know how to use something or not.

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

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.

Not everything needs to be recycled.

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

Waste is only waste if we waste it.

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.

In the draft plan, we're looking at recycling 20 percent of our garbage by 2010.

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

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.

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

We have been getting ready to recycle more e-waste by investing in infrastructure, providing grants to local government and working with industry.

We can turn your bottles back into oil. We can burn it to make energy. Our we can put it in a landfill. There’s a green spectrum. And a cost spectrum. The most green is the most expensive.

After all, does it make sense to be chucking things like glass, paper, cardboard, wood, metals, plastics, and food waste into holes in the ground? No, it doesn't; especially when someone will pay you good money to take them off your hands or, in the case of wood and food waste, when you can turn them into renewable energy.

Any waste stream in our society can be turned into a revenue stream. It's turning the lemons in our society into lemonade.

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

To achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our "garbage index" - that which we permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems. Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity. Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system.

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

Your trash can is full of energy bar wrappers." "You were looking through my trash?

I learned in America a long time ago, the three R's, the principle of three R's - reuse, reduce, recycle. And as I say those words, there are so many things individually we can do to reduce - we don't need to consume as much as we are consuming. Reduce. And by reusing, we can reuse a lot of things we just throw into the dumpsite. And reduce the production. The more we reuse, the more we can reduce.

One man's trash is another man's treasure is a third man's raw materials for their planet-buster earthquake machine.

I was brought up to reuse things.

I mean, if cans can be recycled, why not spirits?

Tile is going to the landfill by the metric ton. All we have to do it gather it up, glue it down to the floor and grout it. Then you have a tile floor, and not just any tile floor: it's a mosaic of your own choosing.