40 Plastic Pollution Quotes Provoking Action and Awareness

"Of all the waste we generate, plastic bags are perhaps the greatest symbol of our throwaway society. They are used, then forgotten, and they leave a terrible legacy."
- Zac Goldsmith

"Pollution from oil and gas development, toxic run off, and miles and miles of plastic trash foul the waters and threaten marine life."
- Frances Beinecke

"Not only are plastics polluting our oceans and waterways and killing marine life – it's in all of us and we can't escape consuming plastics."
- Marco Lambertini

"Plastic disposal not only pollutes the land but the water and the air, the three primary elements for any living being on the earth"
- Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

"Plastic waste is now found in the most remote areas of the planet. It kills marine life and is doing major harm to communities that depend on fishing and tourism."
- António Guterres

"BPA is just one chemical used to make plastic baby bottles and in the lining of food, beverage, and infant formula containers. Research shows that children are exposed to BPA by drinking from polycarbonate bottles and consuming food from containers made using BPA."
- Suzy Shuster

"It cannot be right to manufacture billions of objects that are used for a matter of minutes, and then are with us for centuries."
- Roz Savage

"Plastic is the most destructive weapon than a nuclear bomb or an atom bomb, its impact shall remain for centuries on the future generation"
- Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

"There are five known gyres spinning around in our world's oceans. A gyre is a slowly moving spiral of currents created by a high pressure system of air currents. A spinning soup, so to speak, is made of what exists in the water. And in this case, the gyres are spinning with millions of tons of our discarded and forgotten about plastic waste!"
- Brandon Boyd

"I'm scared by the amount of bottled water being consumed today, instead of people drinking filtered tap water. Did you know that nearly a percent of those plastic bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose?"
- Robert England

"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."
- John Doerr

"We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly."
- Anne Marie Bonneau

"To me, I think people who don't think it's a big deal to toss a plastic bottle in the garbage are not only being irresponsible, but I think they're being disrespectful of all the other humans on earth."
- Sophia Bush

"Industrial pollution and the discarding of plastic waste must be tackled for the sake of all life in the ocean."
- Sir David Attenbourgh

"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."
- Carlo Ratti

"I think, on a personal level, everybody, when you go through the checkout line after you get your groceries and they say, ‘Paper or plastic?' We should be saying, ‘Neither one.' We should have our own cloth bags."
- Woody Harrelson

"Banning plastic bags so that people use paper bags or imported reusable bags that will end up in landfills soon thereafter is not the solution to our plastic bag challenge."
- Kevin De Leon

"Forget bottled water; tap water is just as good! Pour it into a reusable water bottle, and always have fresh water on the go without wasting plastic."
- Ashlan Gorse Cousteau

"The longest-lived people eat a plant-based diet. They eat meat but only as a condiment or as a celebration. Nothing they eat has a plastic wrapper."
- Dan Buettner

"Recycling more plastics can help local businesses and expand jobs while supporting the goals of sustainability."
- Kevin de Leon

"The strongest governments on earth cannot clean up pollution by themselves. They must rely on each ordinary person, like you and me, on our choices, and on our will."
- Chai Jing

"We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives because it's not going to be around forever."
- Margaret Atwood

"For all the environmental troubles single-use shopping bags cause, the much greater impacts are in what they contain. reducing the human footprint means addressing fundamentally unsustainable habits of food consumption, such as expecting strawberries in the depths of winter or buying of seafood that are being fished to the brink of extinction."
- Susan Freinkel, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story

"We humans have become so dependent on plastics for a range of uses, from packaging to products. Reducing our use of plastic bags is an easy place to start getting our addiction out of control."
- David Suzuki

"When plastics do break down, they don't biodegrade; rather, they break into increasingly smaller pieces, many of which end up in the oceans as microplastics that harm aquatic life and birds."
- David Suzuki

"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."
- David Suzuki

"Outright bans on plastic bags may not be the best solution, but education and incentives to get people to stop using them are necessary."
- David Suzuki

"Plastic bags are bad and for the most part unnecessary."
- David Suzuki

"I'll tell you what scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic bottles and these things. Why does my water have to be in a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean. And I don't know, I'm just terrified of the proliferation of plastic."
- Helen Mirren

"All the king's horses and all the king's men will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again."
- Captain Charles Moore

"I used to love those little cute bottles of amenities in the hotel room. And while the soap, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion may smell great, they waste an incredible amount of plastic and space in your luggage."
- Ashlan Gorse Cousteau

"Mother Earth has already buzzed the alarm of danger to her son, the human by refusing plastic in the form of global warming."
- Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

"The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags."
- James Buchan

"Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest."
- Captain Charles J Moore

"Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans."
- Jacques Yves Cousteau

"If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct."
- Peter Benchley

"Plastic pollution free world is not a choice but a commitment to life – a commitment to the next generation."
- Amit Ray

"To carry a bottle of drinking water in the plastic, don't carry away the entire ocean with plastic."
- Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

"Usage of plastic in packing medicines will pack the earth medically unfit for any life."
- Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

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