Quotes About Sustainability

Say farewell to economy-as-machine and embrace economy-as-organism.

When Chief Oren Lyons of the Iroquois Onondaga Nation was invited to address students at the University of Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, he highlighted this risk. 'What you call resources we call our relatives,' he explained. 'If you can think in terms of relationships, you are going to treat them better, aren't you? . . . Get back to the relationship because that is your foundation for survival.

Corporate interest in forging 'circular advantage' is growing fast, and companies leading the pack have adopted a niche set of circular economy techniques such as: aiming for zero-waste manufacturing; selling services instead of products (such as computer printing services instead of printers); and recovering their own-brand goods—ranging from tractors to laptops—for refurbishment and resale.

In the Togolese capital of Lomé, architect Sénamé Agbodjinou and colleagues set up Woelab in 2012, a 'low-high tech' workshop making its own design of open-source 3D printers using the component parts of defunct computers, printers and scanners that have been dumped in West Africa.

A business that is built on a living purpose may have strong foundations, but without a source of finance that is aligned with its values it is unlikely to survive and thrive.

The Doughnut's inner ring—its social foundation—sets out the basics of life on which no one should be left falling short.

Regenerative industrial design can only be fully realised if it is underpinned by regenerative economic design.

We would have to be crazy to kick ourselves out of the Holocene's sweet spot, but that is, of course, exactly what we have been doing.

Around 13% of people worldwide are malnourished. How much food would it take to meet their caloric needs? Just 3% of the global food supply. To put that in context, 30%–50% of the world's food gets lost post-harvest, wasted in global supply chains, or scraped off dinner plates and into kitchen bins.44 Hunger could, in effect, be ended with just 10% of the food that never gets eaten.

Around 13 percent of people worldwide are malnourished. How much food would it take to meet their caloric needs? Just 3 percent of the global food supply. To put that in context, 30–50 percent of the world's food gets lost post-harvest, wasted in global supply chains or scraped off dinner plates and into kitchen bins.44 Hunger could, in effect, be ended with just 10 percent of the food that never gets eaten.

The last two centuries of extraordinary economic growth in high-income countries are largely due to the availability of cheap fossil fuels.

never plastic, not even for a picnic),

you can rent the tree from your local nursery.)

From The Jilting of Granny Weatherall ] You waste life when you waste good food.

We are concerned about the environment, but we avoid thinking very much about the gallons of clean hot water we use every day and the toxins in our cleansers that we pour down the drain. Living up to our hygienic standards takes huge amounts of energy, but cleanliness is such a sacred cow that to be told "cut down on your washing" would be even more repugnant than being urged to restrict our driving.

We don't own the earth. We are the earth's caretakers...we take care of it and all the things on it. And when we're done with it, it should be left better than we found it.

This state of affairs is not inevitable. Humans were able to employ science and law to transform common holdings into a commodity and then into capital; we also have the ability to reverse this path, transforming some of our now overabundant capital into renewed commons.

human needs are finite, but human greed is not …

At this point in our planetary history, if we are simply to survive, we need to follow the law of unity between humanity and nature. If we keep trying to break the laws of nature, they will eventually break us.

When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.

When you have little, mine Aviva, you learn to take care. When you have much, you must accept that you could someday have little," she would say. "To take care of something is to love it.

Its an onion tree. Every time Sam takes off an onion, two more will grow in its place.

There's not a single chef I know of that does not think about the politics of the food they're serving.

Local innovation and initiative can help us better understand how to protect our environment.