Un Environmental Sustainability Quotes & Sayings

Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination — Janine Benyus

The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on. — Alex Steffen

Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain. — Mark Parker

The "environmental movement" is becoming an economic movement, is joining the social justice movement, is becoming a sustainability movement. It's leaving behind the "People's Needs versus Nature's Needs" conflict in favor of making the case for environmental health as the essential underpinning of prosperous and stable human civilization. — Edward Norton

With increasing fervor since the 1980s, sustainability has been the watchword of scientists, environmental activists, and indeed all those concerned about the complex, fragile systems on the sphere we inhabit. It has shaped debates about business, design, and our lifestyles. — Jamais Cascio

One buzzphrase that arose was 'sustainable development', which was used in two very different senses by opposing groups, because it left vague by what metric sustainability might be measured. Environmental groups meant by 'sustainability' a holistic approach by which life as we know it might be sustained. Scientists talked about 'sustainable cities' to mean cities that would not be destroyed by flooding in the wake of global warming. But to others, 'sustainable' meant a financial approach by which the oil industry as we know it might be sustained: sustainability was the minimum amount of environmental care that was affordable by those whose activities harmed the environment. — Steven Poole

I'm not out there suggesting that we should ban every plastic product. But there are some whose environmental costs exceed their utility, and the [plastic] bag is one of them. — Susan Freinkel

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do. — Paul Hawken

Without environmental sustainability, economic stability and social cohesion cannot be achieved — Phil Harding

The planetary phase of history has begun, but the future shape of global society remains profoundly uncertain. Though perhaps improbable, a shift toward a planetary civilization of enriched lives, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability is still possible. — Paul Raskin

As far as I'm concerned, it is clear that the concept of premium will be increasingly defined through sustainability in the future. BMW, like no other brand, will still stand for vitality and driving pleasure in the future. But it will also represent efficiency and environmental friendliness. — Norbert Reithofer

I think we have reached a stage now where we need to find solutions to economic injustice in the same place and in the same ways that we find solutions to sustainability. Sustainability on environmental grounds and justice in terms of everyone having a place in the production and consumption system - these are two aspects of the same issue. They have been artificially separated and have to be put back again in the Western way of thinking. — Vandana Shiva

Premium will increasingly be defined in terms of sustainability and environmental compatibility — Norbert Reithofer

Now is not the time to repudiate environmental balance, but rather it is the time for all of us to work together - politician, advocate, rancher, scientist, and citizen. Only by doing this will the United States move forward and be a leader in environmental issues and ensure sustainability to our delicate ecosystem. — Robert Redford

Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty. — Noreena Hertz

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability. — Thomas Perez

If we do not serve what coheres and endures, we serve what disintegrates and destroys. — Wendell Berry

More and more companies are reaching out to their suppliers and contractors to work jointly on issues of sustainability, environmental responsibility, ethics, and compliance. — Simon Mainwaring

Placing economic activity in the context of the whole earth requires attention to the question of scale. Bigger is obviously not better, so the optimum scale of human economy in relation to the total economy becomes basically a question of sustainability. When the effects of the economy on the environment undercut the possibility of its own continuance, the scale is too large. — John B. Cobb

I don't want people to write programmatic environmental poems, but I think sustainability should become deeply a part of the consciousness of poetry - an impulse toward compassion, empathy, and social justice. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

He [Aldo Leopold] recognized that industrial-age tools were incompatible with truly wild country - that roads eventually brought with them streams of tourists and settlers, hotels and gas stations, summer homes and cabins, and a diminishment of land health. He sort of invented the concept of wilderness as we now understand it in America: a stretch of country without roads, where all human movement must happen on foot or horseback. He understood that to keep a little remnant of our continent wild, we had no choice but to exercise restraint. I think it's one of the best ideas our culture ever had, not to mention our best hope for preserving the full diversity of nonhuman life in a few functioning ecosystems. — Philip Connors

This heated (environmental) debate is fundamentally about numbers. How much energy could each source deliver, at what economic and social cost, and with what risks? But actual numbers are rarely mentioned. In public debates, people just say "Nuclear is a money pit" or "We have a huge amount of wave and wind." The trouble with this sort of language is that it's not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one "huge" compares with another "huge," namely our huge energy consumption. To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives. — David Mackay

Sara Scherr and Jeff McNeely have given us a thoughtful, sensible book about a topic of great importance to the world. There is no food security, no poverty reduction, no environmental sustainability without transforming our agricultural practices. The book ?presents well documented cases of best practices from all over the world. It should be required reading for all concerned with agriculture, the environment, food security or just the future of our children. — Ismail Serageldin

We should bring in an environmental attitude, and I think luxury should automatically be about sustainability and quality. — Jochen Zeitz

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital. — Maurice Strong

Implementation of a knowledge based economy is a significant precondition for environmental and social sustainability. — Eraldo Banovac

The dialogue about sustainability is about a change in the human trajectory that will require us to rethink old assumptions and engage the large questions of the human condition that some presume to have been solved once and for all. — David W. Orr

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back. — William Kittredge

In the UK what we've found is that even businesses which prided themselves already on their efficient management find that a really beady-eyed scrutiny of their resource management, with an eye to environmental best-practice and long term sustainability, produce fresh efficiency and fresh savings that actually shock those in the company — Margaret Beckett