60 Recycling Quotes To Repurpose and Reuse

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Updated November 15, 2023

Take a moment to repurpose and reuse some of these remarkable recycling quotes.

Look, nobody likes to hear about what they are not doing well.

As a planet, we are not doing so hot when caring for our environment.

We could certainly improve our recycling skills.

Tell us your favorite recycling quote in the comment section below.

What are the benefits of reading these recycling quotes?

Recycling is one action we can take to improve our environment.

Recycling is:

not difficult; it can be fun
when we convert waste materials into reusable items
part of our efforts to prevent pollution of our land space and oceans

Across the country, gas prices continue to soar, impacting how many people heat their homes.

Did you know that the amount of wood and paper we throw away is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years?

These solutions do not require high-tech or arduous actions on our part but a shift in how we perceive “trash.”

Short recycling quotes for Instagram

1. “I’m a recycling obsessive.” — Perdita Weeks

2. “If you recycle, the planet loves you.” — Anonymous

3. “Recycle like your life depends on it.” — Anonymous

4. “Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, the power is yours!” — Captain Planet

5. “We were in recycling before recycling was cool.” — Anthony Pratt

6. “The recycling in my house was imposed by my kids.” — Antonio Banderas

7. “If you’re not buying recycled products, you’re not really recycling.” — Ed Begley, Jr.

8. “I like to take out the recycling because I actually feel like I’m doing something.” — Mike Quigley

9. “You can recycle pretty much everything in your house if you are mindful about what you buy.” — Anonymous

10. “If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they’ll be all over it.” — Bill Nye

Recycling quotes about energy and landfills

11. “I’m adamant about recycling in my house, and I’m always making sure to turn off the lights.” — Matt Lanter

12. “Most fashion is worn for a few seasons and off-loaded into the recycling bin or, worse, some landfill.” — Robin Givhan

13. “My hobby of not attending meetings about recycling saves more energy than your hobby of recycling.” — John McCarthy

14. “Recycling, cutting back on driving, and changing out old light bulbs for energy-efficient ones might save half a ton of carbon a year.” — Annie Lowrey

15. “Seoul will build more resource recovery facilities and establish new recycling facilities with the aim of achieving zero landfills of domestic waste.” — Park Won-soon

16. “The more you focus on sex without love, and drugs and violence, lifestyle of intimidation and recycling, the less energy you spend on opening up the big tent.” — Jesse Jackson

17. “A household going car-free, flight-free, and vegan – changes impractical, if not outright impossible, for many families to make – might reduce emissions by four tons a year.” — Annie Lowrey

18. “Mostly, I spend my time being a mother to my two children, working in my organic garden, raising masses of sweet peas, being passionately involved in conservation, recycling and solar energy.” — Blythe Danner

19. “When coming in to land at Santiago, Chile, I saw the area between the city and the Andes mountains was smoking with rubbish dumps. While exploring the dumps, I made friends with people living and working there and saw how they survived through recycling the rubbish.” — Michael Foreman

20. “In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It’s environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill.” — Tristram Stuart

More short recycling quotes

21. “You can’t just keep recycling revivals.” — Harold Prince

22. “There’s a recycling mentality about my work.” — Wangechi Mutu

23. “For me, green is more about cycling than recycling.” — Giles Deacon

24. “Recycling old buildings to show art is very important.” — Agnes Gund

25. “A Smart City cannot be imagined without proper recycling.” — Rajnath Singh

26. “It’s like recycling: selling old clothes to help make new ones.” — Erin O’Connor

27. “My mom is the recycling Nazi, and I always bring a bag to the grocery store.” — Jane Levy

28. “My father was in the paper recycling business back before they called it recycling.” — Daniel Keyes

29. “Recycling, packaging, businesses are changing all of those things because that’s what consumers want.” — Jerry Greenfield

30. “Recycling is an area where jobs could be created at low cost. Green collar workers. That’s not very sexy.” — Geoff Mulgan

Environmental and recycling quotes from celebrities

31. “In my family we’ve always been into ethical stuff and recycling.” — Bonnie Wright

32. “Our planet’s alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!” — Leonardo DiCaprio

33. “When he’s out, I collect them, cut off the labels, and bury them deep in the recycling box under the wine bottles.” — Helen George

34. “The kids are always so passionate. I feel like they are our protectors. They care so much about recycling and climate change.” — Zoe Ball

35. “Climate change is the greatest threat to our existence in our short history on this planet. Nobody’s going to buy their way out of its effects.” — Mark Ruffalo

36. “It’s my third boy in less than three years, so there wasn’t a lot to do. Hand-me-downs from my other children. I’m recycling, so it was a very easy thing.” — Hilaria Baldwin

37. “Climate change is real. It is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.” — Leonardo DiCaprio

38. “It makes a big difference to recycle. It makes a big difference to use recycled products. It makes a big difference to reuse things, to not use the paper cup—and each time you do, that’s a victory.” — Emily Deschanel

39. “I own about 300 pairs of shoes. When I start to go over 300, I have mini-sales from my closet and give the money to charity. It’s my way of recycling; I feel like I can give back to the universe.” — Stacy London

40. “Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn’t help much. Basically, it’s going to have to be legislation because the impact is so huge and diversified.” — Ted Danson

Recycling quotes that offer some direction and perspective

41. “We’ve been given a warning by science and a wake-up call by nature; it is up to us now to heed them.” — Bill McKibben

42. “Increasing recycling in Delaware is an idea whose time has come and, if put off, may not come again.” — Ruth Ann Minner

43. “The time for seeking global solutions is running out. We can find suitable solutions only if we act together and in agreement.” — Pope Francis

44. “If recycling is the future, then we must focus our efforts on mitigating negative impacts to our community while protecting our environment.” — Tony Cardenas

45. “I grew up in Plaza East public housing in the Western Addition, five of us living on $900 per month. ‘Recycling’ meant drinking out of old mayonnaise jars.” — London Breed

46. “People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something ‘larger.’” — Arlie Russell Hochschild

47. “It’s all about fair trade and helping people eating locally grown stuff. We’re recycling everything. We’re trying to tour in the most conscious way possible, environmentally and socially.” — Andrew Dost

48. “For the states that take the lead on reform – asset recycling, deregulation, service innovation – the Federal Government could step back and allow greater flexibility in how we deliver our responsibilities.” — Gladys Berejiklian

49. “Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.” — Mike Huckabee

50. “We don’t need more recycling, we need a completely different system of closed-loop manufacturing, and no matter how many cans I crush, my personal actions at the consumer level are of very little importance in getting us there.” — Alex Steffen

51. “There’s more time spent on teaching kids about recycling than on character development in the American schools.” ― Dennis Prager

52. “The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions.” ― John Henry Holland

53. “You have to keep recycling yourself.” ― Chuck Palahniuk

54. “One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.” ― P. J. O’Rourke

55. “Quotation is a method of appropriation which is invincible, I think. It’s not a procedure which displeases me, contrary to recycling.” ― Susan Sontag

56. “O love, please give me a passionate red recycling bin. I will put my desire in it. I don’t ever want to throw love away.” ― Derrick Williams

57. “One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods.” ― Fay Weldon

58. “During holiday parties I end up recycling a lot of my cocktail dresses and just wearing a layering piece, like a blazer and tights, with it.” ― Lauren Conrad

59. “Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.” ― Jean-Dominique Bauby

60. “I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.” ― Paul Lansky

What are your thoughts on recycling?

It is a sobering thought, but on average, each of us produces about 4.4 pounds of solid waste daily.

Much of this is paper waste.

A solution to this problem is to be mindful of how we use and reuse paper and dispose of it.

Aluminum can be recycled repeatedly; there is no limit to how many times they can remake it.

We can reduce how much trash we create by being mindful of where we put aluminum cans when we are done with them.

It does not require a Herculean effort to put the can in the recycling bin instead of the trash bin.

In the digital age, where more people read their news from online sources rather than paper sources, we still produce tons of newspaper waste.