Marcel Wanders Quotes

I don't subscribe to the view some people have in the industry that you should purposefully design products that do not last that long. I don't think it is good for anyone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Don't keep excessive amounts of anything. Those glass vases that come from florists. Those ketchup packets that come with take-out food. A house with two adults probably doesn't need fifteen mismatched souvenir coffee cups.

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.

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

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.

I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

Nobody likes to throw stuff away. It's just antithetical to our sense of being a person. But we're all habituated to that way of living today.

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.

If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.

I feel like everyone should buy less but buy better.

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.

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!

There are two ways to be rich: to have more or need less. It's estimated that we squander about 30 percent of our energy leaving the lights on, the refrigerator door open, and so on. Then there is the enormous amount of food that we expend huge amounts of energy to raise and then throw away.

I do think if you aim for quality, it's not so much about consumerism. The idea is 'Buy less, choose well, make it last.'

The model of the consumer society is something that will one day end. My personal view is that too much consumption is wrong.

I don't mind 800 million Chinese drinking a bottle [of Coca-Cola] a day, but I don't want them to bring back the empties.