40 Recycling Quotes Inspiring A Waste-free World

"There is no such thing as ‘away'. When we throw anything away it must go somewhere."
- Annie Leonard

"If you're not buying recycled products, you're not really recycling."
- Ed Begley, Jr.

"While recycling is great in a lot of ways, the ultimate goal is to get people to prevent waste in the first place."
- McKenzie Jones

"Most fashion is worn for a few seasons and off-loaded into the recycling bin or, worse, some landfill."
- Robin Givhan

"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."
- Neil LaBute

"Recycling is more than just a response to the environmental crisis and has assumed a symbolic role in beginning to change the nature of western societies and the culture of consumerism. Indeed many environmentalists assume that there will be an inevitable shift from our 'throwaway' society to a post-industrial 'recycling' society of the future."
- Matthew Gandy

"We never know the worth of water till the well is dry."
- Thomas Fuller

"If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production."
- Pete Seeger

"It makes a big difference to recycle. It makes a big difference to use recycled products. It makes a big difference to reuse things, to not use the paper cup – and each time you do, that’s a victory."
- Emily Deschanel

"Waste does not exist in nature because ecosystems reuse everything that grows in a never-ending cycle of efficiency and purpose."
- Frans van Houten

"When you put the whole picture together, recycling is the right thing to do."
- Pam Shoemaker

"Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours."
- Denis Hayes

"All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world."
- Victor Hugo

"I would rather see us recycle fewer things well, than more things poorly."
- David Allaway

"We don't need more recycling, we need a completely different system of closed-loop manufacturing, and no matter how many cans I crush, my personal actions at the consumer level are of very little importance in getting us there."
- Alex Steffen

"I imagine a future with no waste; material innovations have already become exponentially more vast, and I do think the future needs to be cradle to cradle. If designed properly, one product could be used for many years before needing to be recycled, or its components reused."
- Yves Behar

"If recycling is the future, then we must focus our efforts on mitigating negative impacts to our community while protecting our environment."
- Tony Cardenas

"Recycling, packaging, businesses are changing all of those things because that's what consumers want."
- Jerry Greenfield

"Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn't help much. Basically, it's going to have to be legislation because the impact is so huge and diversified."
- Ted Danson

"The recycling movement is floundering, and its survival depends on continual subsidies, sermons and policing. How can you build a sustainable city with a strategy that can't even sustain itself?"
- John Tierney

"Many people still believe that ‘green' solutions are too expensive, but they are actually much cheaper when all of the costs to public health, social services, and waste handling are factored into the same equation."
- Majora Carter

"Solid wastes are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem."
- Jimmy Carter

"Issues relating to global health and sustainability must stay high on the agenda if we are to cope with an ageing and ever-increasing population, with growing pressure on resources, and with rising global temperatures. The risks and dangers need to be assessed and then confronted."
- Martin Rees

"You have to hold yourself accountable for your actions, and that's how we're going to protect the Earth."
- Julia Butterfly Hill

"The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations."
- John Paul II

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."
- Robert Swan

"Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it."
- Mike Huckabee

"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
- Gaylord Nelson

"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."
- Cherie Lunghi

"I'm a recycling obsessive."
- Perdita Weeks

"People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something larger."
- Arlie Russell Hochschild

"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."
- Erma Bombeck

"If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they’ll be all over it."
- Bill Nye

"The recycling in my house was imposed by my kids."
- Antonio Banderas

"The kids are always so passionate. I feel like they are our protectors. They care so much about recycling and climate change."
- Zoe Ball

"The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions."
- John Henry Holland

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."
- Native American Proverb

"In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill."
- Tristram Stuart

"When coming in to land at Santiago, Chile, I saw the area between the city and the Andes mountains was smoking with rubbish dumps. While exploring the dumps, I made friends with people living and working there and saw how they survived through recycling the rubbish."
- Michael Foreman

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