My favorite Quotes

My two favorite quotes from this semester were:

“Guess what percentage of total material flow through this system is still in product or use 6 months after their sale in North America. Fifty percent? Twenty? NO. One percent. One! In other words, 99 percent of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport—99 percent of the stuff we run through this system is trashed within 6 months.” “Story of Stuff”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, rather than bemoaning human industry, we had reason to champion it? If environmentalists as well as automobile makers could applaud every time someone exchanged an old car for a new one, because new cars purified the air and produced drinking water?....If modern societies were perceived as increasing assets and delights on a very large scale, instead of bringing the planet to the brink of disaster?” Cradle to Cradle, page 90

I love these two quotes. The first one shows the true crisis that we are in right now – it illustrates the amount of consumption in the U.S. that quickly becomes waste. It proves that we need a new system. The second quote I equally love because I think that it shows optimism. I don’t think that you can solve a problem by just complaining how negative it is. I think that you need to create positive solutions and create something that makes people interested in doing the right thing.