Resources Materials Quotes & Sayings

I'm not suggesting that microbial cellulose is going to be a replacement for cotton, leather or other textile materials. But I do think it could be quite a smart and sustainable addition to our increasingly precious natural resources. — Suzanne Lee

I studied law at Warwick University, then philosophy at Oxford. I met my wife Leah there. She is American, so I followed her to New York. — Adrian McKinty

The "old school" of wastewater treatment, still embraced by most government regulators and many academics, considers water to be a vehicle for the routine transfer of waste from on place to another. It also considers the accompanying organic material to be of little or no value. The "new school", on the other hand, sees water as a dwindling, precious resource that should not be polluted with waste; organic materials are seen as resources that should be constructively recycled. My research for this chapter included reviewing hundreds of research papers on alternative wastewater systems. I was amazed at the incredible amount of time and money that has gone into studying how to clean the water we have polluted with human excrement. In all of the research papers, without exception, the idea that we should simply stop defecating in water was never suggested. — Joseph Jenkins

Are you trying to protect me?" I asked, starting to get slightly pissed. "Dude. Knock it off. You're not my knight in shining armor. You're a dick in dented tin. — T.J. Klune

If we cannot make a profit, that means we are committing a sort of crime against society. We take society's capital, we take their people, we take their materials, yet without a good profit, we are using precious resources that could be better used elsewhere. — Konosuke Matsushita

The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. — Stuart L. Hart

Madrid is not as big as London, but it is true when you are coming from a big city like Madrid, nothing is going to surprise you, and I am very happy to move to a city like London. It is a big city, and you can do everything you want with the respect that the English people always have. — Fernando Torres

The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources - energy and materials - and generates enormous waste ... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory — Sunita Narain

Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they are designed for - a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" - a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality. — William McDonough

Another error that prognosticators make is to consider the transformations that will result from a single trend in today's world as if nothing else will change. A good example is the concern that radical life extension will result in overpopulation and the exhaustion of limited material resources to sustain human life, which ignores comparably radical wealth creation from nanotechnology and strong AI. For example, nanotechnology-based manufacturing devices in the 2020s will be capable of creating almost any physical product from inexpensive raw materials and information. — Ray Kurzweil

Since human needs are finite, but human greed is not, economic growth can usually be maintained through artificial creation of needs by means of advertising. The goods that are produced and sold in this way are often unneeded, and thus are essentially waste. The pollution and depletion of natural resources generated by this enormous waste of unnecessary goods is exacerbated by the waste of energy and materials in inefficient production processes. Indeed, as we discuss in Chapter 17, the — Fritjof Capra

Some people say that the West has a cruel history. These people also may see the achievements of Western countries - in terms of the economy, education, health, and social achievements - as a result of exploitation of poorer countries, including Arab countries. Western nations get rich by using resources such as Arab oil. Meanwhile, the countries supplying them raw materials remain poor. Due to such injustices, jealousies are created. — Dalai Lama

There's this very vulnerable planet of ours with finite resources. Architects and designers have, I think, a fair responsibility for conserving energy and materials, and making things durable. — Robin Day

Moving toward a more harmonious way of life and greater resilience requires our active participation. This means finding ways to become more aware of and connected to the other forms of life that are around us and that constitute our food -- plants and animals, as well as bacteria and fungi -- and to the resources, such as water, fuel, materials, tools, and transportation, upon which we depend. It means taking responsibility for our shit, both literally and figuratively. — Sandor Ellix Katz

I'm afraid you will have to fly holding the rock with its heavy chain. — Carlos Castaneda

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. — David Korten

Parents matter, buildings count, curriculum choices, materials, resources - all these things are important in a top-class education. But, in the end, it comes down to the teachers. — Kimberly Quinn

If orange trees grew all over the country, you couldn't sell oranges. Do you understand that? So, all our decision making is based upon scarcity or the availability of resources. If we have a shortage of any kind of resource, we put all the labs to work on making substitute materials. People always worry about 'What if we run out of a certain material?', but we have enough technology today to make thousands of different substitutes. — Jacque Fresco

The trebling of the population in this small and impoverished country, flowing with milk and honey but not with sufficient water, rich in rocks and sand dunes but poor in natural resources and vital raw materials, has been no easy task: Indeed, practical men, with their eyes fixed upon things as they are, regarded it as an empty and insubstantial utopian dream. — David Ben-Gurion

When developing an idea, I remind myself not to start with compromise. I envision the ideal manifestation of the idea, as if I had no limits in resources, materials, or permission. — Janet Echelman

What we can do as landscape architects is look at how we can use materials to the best
advantage, and our resources like water. Water is so precious that we can't waste it, we have to
use it in small amounts, and we have to use it effectively. — Pamela Palmer

In order to have enough of the raw materials ... which will be lacking in wartime, we should plan to acquire and use foreign resources existing in our expected sphere of influence, such as Sakhalim, China, and the Southern Pacific. — Sadao Araki

The demand for justice always exceeds the supply. — Marty Rubin

Plant genetic resources are seldom 'raw materials'; they are the expression of the current wisdom of farmers who have played a highly significant role in the building up of the world's genetic resource base ... As is already happening in my country, farmers and national genebanks in developing countries can work together to preserve and expand crop genetic diversity on behalf of all humanity. — Melaku Worede

The Pacific coral reef, as a kind of oasis in a desert, can stand as an object lesson for man who must now learn that mutualism between autotrophic and heterotrophic components, and between producers and consumers in the societal realm, coupled with efficient recycling of materials and use of energy, are the keys to maintaining prosperity in a world of limited resources. — Eugene Odum

People, materials, facilities, money, and time are the resources available to us for conducting our business. By applying our skills, we turn these resources into useful products and services. If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents the value we add to the resources we utilize. — David Packard

We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply were infinite. We must even face the prospect of changing our basic ways of living. This change will either be made on our own initiative in a planned and rational way, or forced on us with chaos and suffering by the inexorable laws of nature. — Jimmy Carter

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner. — Anil Agarwal