26 Quotes by John Elkington

I'm part of the consumer culture. I was part of the baby boom generation. I have a car when I shouldn't, a couple of computers; I can't be anti-consumerist in that sense.

What people say often precedes what they think. Some people sometimes say, "I have to hear myself talk before I know what I think." I think language sometimes, because it opens new channels, it opens new doors, is enormously important.

Any prudent business looks at the reality and how to maximize our investment.

The biggest weakness of the green-consumer movement, always, is that we tend to pick the easy-to-do things because that's where we can most readily engage people. It doesn't cost them very much to switch products or whatever it happens to be.

So, you could call me optimistic and hopeful and probably just a little bit naïve, but I'm coming from the space that the best way to predict the future is to get out there and just do it yourself

The path to relative economic, social and ecological sustainability is guaranteed to be littered with failures of every nature and scale. If we recognize them and learn from them, the transition will proceed faster and in more resource-efficient ways. If, on the other hand, we prefer the short-term comfort of burying our failures, or of blaming scapegoats, the transition will be significantly slowed, or could even be derailed completely.

I think that consumerism is intrinsically a pretty flawed social system.

I think people often underestimate the power of consumers. But I equally say that consumers are like shock troops: You can't keep them agitated and motivated and committed and active forever. There are pulses where they switch on to a particular issue, and just inevitably they switch off.

I'm worried about greenwashing. I think we should come down on it very, very hard, whether it's with criminal intent or actively deceptive.