“There is no excuse-and we should call a spade a spade-for chemical companies and oil refineries using our major rivers as pipelines for toxic waste. There is no excuse for communities to use other people's rivers as a dump for their raw sewage.” PeopleShouldUseCommunityCompanyWasteMajorsRiversExcuseOilChemicalsToxicNo ExcusesDumpEcoSpadesPipelineSewageToxic WasteRefinery Author:Lyndon B. Johnson
“The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.” PeopleMindBodyHandsCommunityNumbersWasteLaborProsperityCorruptionEaseAcquireFedsDecayEmployedIdlenessFeverAtrophy Author:Samuel Johnson
“The military is the largest polluter in the country, and so you have a lot of military waste contaminating reservations - as, for example, on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, where 5,000 sheep died in some kind of experimental military nerve gas test 10 years ago. Many of our communities are dealing with that kind of waste, and an absence of political will to clean them up.” YearsKindCountryPoliticalCommunityMilitaryExampleWasteYears AgoTestsDiedCleanEnvironmentalAbsenceGasNervesValleysSheepPollutionSkullsOur CommunityReservationsPolitical Will Author:Winona LaDuke
“The wave of the future is on the local level. Don't waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. But come into where you're almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.” WantTryingMindHeartFightingCommunityLevelsWasteWaveLocalsDestroyingHeart And MindRadar Author:Joanna Macy
“I was recruited to sort of be the doc to advocate for communities that were struggling with polluting incinerators, polluting coal plants, toxic waste sites, etc.” CommunityStruggleWastePlantEtcToxicSiteCoalToxic Waste Author:Jill Stein
“The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community - and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.” WayNeedsStatesProblemLightFacesIndividualCommunityAnswersResultsGreaterHigherTaxesWasteSpendingPrioritiesAddressesLocality Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1973 Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1973
“The current system punishes communities which make the investment in creating landfills, only to have them filled by states which refuse to adequately address their waste issues.” StatesCommunityIssuesWasteCreatingFilledInvestmentCurrentsRefuseAddressesLandfills Author:Paul Gillmor
“With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.” SelfFormCommunityEconomicWasteRegardInstinctWesternMotiveExceptionCivilizedStrongestPreservationPersistentSelf PreservationPropensityEmulation Author:Thorstein Veblen