"What they are doing is taking something that otherwise creates pollution and turning it into something useful"
About this Quote
The line celebrates a simple but transformative idea: treat waste and emissions as feedstock for value, not as inevitable damage. It praises ingenuity that interrupts a linear path from extraction to pollution and replaces it with a circular one where byproducts are captured, repurposed, and monetized. That shift is not just technical but moral, because it reduces harm while creating tangible benefits.
Coming from Barbara Lee, a longtime California congresswoman and advocate for environmental justice, the sentiment carries a community-centered edge. Her districts have included neighborhoods disproportionately burdened by refineries, freeways, and industrial sites. Turning a pollutant into a product is not only clever engineering; it is a way to lessen daily exposures for people who live closest to the sources and to channel investment into places that have historically paid the highest price for growth.
The phrase evokes practical examples: trapping methane from landfills or dairies to generate electricity, refining used cooking oil into biodiesel, converting captured carbon into building materials, or remanufacturing plastics and tires into infrastructure. Each case embodies the same logic: pollution is often a failure of imagination and incentives. With the right policy signals and community partnerships, the same molecules can be redirected from the air and water into the economy.
There is also a quiet insistence on accountability. Turning harmful outputs into useful inputs must genuinely reduce net emissions and local toxicity, not provide cover for business as usual. That requires rigorous standards, transparent monitoring, and fair distribution of benefits to the neighborhoods nearest the plants and pipelines.
At heart, the statement recasts environmentalism as opportunity. It suggests progress looks like fewer flares on the horizon and more paychecks in the neighborhood, fewer asthma attacks and more apprenticeships, less dumping and more design. It is optimism tethered to practice: solve problems by building something better out of what used to be waste.
Coming from Barbara Lee, a longtime California congresswoman and advocate for environmental justice, the sentiment carries a community-centered edge. Her districts have included neighborhoods disproportionately burdened by refineries, freeways, and industrial sites. Turning a pollutant into a product is not only clever engineering; it is a way to lessen daily exposures for people who live closest to the sources and to channel investment into places that have historically paid the highest price for growth.
The phrase evokes practical examples: trapping methane from landfills or dairies to generate electricity, refining used cooking oil into biodiesel, converting captured carbon into building materials, or remanufacturing plastics and tires into infrastructure. Each case embodies the same logic: pollution is often a failure of imagination and incentives. With the right policy signals and community partnerships, the same molecules can be redirected from the air and water into the economy.
There is also a quiet insistence on accountability. Turning harmful outputs into useful inputs must genuinely reduce net emissions and local toxicity, not provide cover for business as usual. That requires rigorous standards, transparent monitoring, and fair distribution of benefits to the neighborhoods nearest the plants and pipelines.
At heart, the statement recasts environmentalism as opportunity. It suggests progress looks like fewer flares on the horizon and more paychecks in the neighborhood, fewer asthma attacks and more apprenticeships, less dumping and more design. It is optimism tethered to practice: solve problems by building something better out of what used to be waste.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|
More Quotes by Barbara
Add to List
