Reuse

“ We repurpose material, we repurpose profit, we repurpose people’s willingness to work, we repurpose the instinct to assist. We are the sector of the economy that really understands what recycling is about. And if you take our ability to repurpose, and you add to it knowledge which is made by sharing, you create assets that would otherwise be wasted, and you drive those assets towards making it possible for everyone to learn. ”

“ No principles exhibited to the human family will suggest that a book, a bench, a house, a tree, or any growing or manufactured article, can be produced without a producer. All we know, all we see, hear, and understand, proves to us that there is no fabric without a constructor.
These reflections lead me to contrast the world with a people like this before me, a people endowed with intelligence and a knowledge of heavenly principles. ”

“ The process of human adaptation of Natural Resources to Artificial effects—or, to use the Economic term, the process of Production,—no matter how complex, is continuous from original conceptions in the human mind to completion and delivery of products to ultimate consumers by the human mind and hand. ”

“ The introduction of a novel product into commerce, or the chance discovery of some property in a common material, may draw a project out of the limbo of impracticabilities. A suggestion at one period may be more valuable than an invention at another, and adaptations may be more useful than discoveries. ”

“ This function is thus, we see, a by-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. ”

“ But if a man makes a new object out of materials which belong partly to him and partly to another—for instance, mead of his own wine and another's honey, or a plaster or eyesalve of drugs which are not all his own, or cloth of wool which belongs only in part to him—in this case there can be no doubt that the new object belongs to its creator, for he has contributed not only part of the material, but the labour by which it was made. ”

“ It is out of such a common life, secondly, that we mark the birth of definite activities for the preservation or change of the same, which may be of universal import, and in fact constitute the end or motive of their continuance, and to complete and carry into effect which we have to presuppose individuals fitted for such a task. ”

“ What is it that is lacking? When I see a craftsman who has material lying ready at hand, I look for the finished product. Here also, then, is the craftsman, and here is the material; what do we yet lack? ”

“ My ‘forced product’ as you call it, is not mine, except in so far that I have found and made use of the forces of regenerative life which are in God’s life and air and which enter into the work of all creation. ”

“ To create new matter is more than it is given to man to do. Hence, by the term production, in its widest sense, we mean simply the bringing forth of new goods—the discovery of new utilities, the change or transformation of already existing goods into new utilities,184 the creation of means for the satisfaction of human wants, out of the aggregate of matter originally present in the world. ”

“ So multiplied are the resources of modern industry that desired forms are created at will, almost without regard to the material employed. It is not so in primitive art, to which for a brief space we will now turn so that our survey of form, though all too cursory, may be refreshed by a contrast of old with new. Let us begin with a glance at some of the aids with which man first provided himself, taking the gifts of nature just as they were offered. ”

“ And the best of these standards were those which held these lower individuals to a clear realization of how difficult it was to come by money—to an understanding of how very necessary it was for all who were engaged in what both considered the only really important constructive work of the world—that of material manufacture—to understand how very essential it was to be drilled, and that sharply and systematically, in all the details and processes which comprise that constructive work. ”

“ Personal interest in, and the old native sense of responsibility for results, ownership and use of the finished products, which have been the inspiration and soul of work in the past, are in more and more fields gone. ”

“ For the latter purpose, when taken as items in a process of cumulative change or as items in the scheme of life, these productive goods are facts of human knowledge, skill, and predilection; that is to say, they are, substantially, prevalent habits of thought, and it is as such that they enter into the process of industrial development. The physical properties of the materials accessible to man are constants: it is the human agent that changes,—his insight and his appreciation of what these things can be used for is what develops. ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. ”

“ Its importance lies in the fact that it obliges us to regard what is called economic choice not as a balancing of utilities, marginal or otherwise, but as a process of "constructive comparison." The new commodity and its purchase price are in reality symbols for alternatively possible systems of life and action. Can the old be relinquished for the new? Before this question is answered each system may be criticized and interpreted from the standpoint of the other, each may be supplemented by suggestion, by dictate of tradition and by impulsive prompting, by inference, and by conjecture. ”

“ We begin then by examining the general rules which the Creator seems to have prescribed to His own operations. We ask, in the first place, whether He is wont, so far as we know, to employ a great multitude of materials, patterns, and forces, or whether He has seen fit to accomplish many different ends by the employment of a few of these only.
In all our studies of external nature, the tendency of increasing knowledge has uniformly been to show that the rules of creation are simplicity of material, economy of inventive effort, and thrift in the expenditure of force. ”

“ On the one hand, new wants have rendered a part necessary, which part has accordingly been created by a succession of efforts: use has kept it in existence, gradually strengthening and developing it till in the end it attains a considerable degree of perfection. ”

“ It contained a fine library, whose growth began before the invention of printing, and had continued to my own time, greatly influenced, of course, by changes of taste and pursuit. Nothing surely can more impress upon a man the transitory nature of possession than his succeeding to an ancient property! ”

“ By these it is that we are enabled to diffuse over the whole earth the productions of any part of it; to fill every corner of it with miracles of art and labour, in exchange for its peculiar commodities; and to concentrate around us, in our dwellings, apparel and utensils, the skill and workmanship not of a few expert individuals, but of all who, in the present and past generations, have contributed their improvements to the processes of our manufactures. ”

“ So, it is obvious that even raw materials in the form in which nature has produced them, are mostly of no value and unavailable for use, unless reproduced through the process of “human creative production.” ”

“ I used up all the supplies in my pack and I want them to think we're living off the land. They believe me to be a primitive and it's best that they should until I decide just how I'm going to make most efficient use of them. ”

“ I assume that the factors which combine to make each generation what it is at the moment of its entrance into adult life are in the main twofold. The one produces the raw material of society, the process of manufacture [Pg 44] is effected by the other. ”

“ In searching for new by-products or machinery for checking the waste and adding to the usefulness of these resources there is a field for invention that will not only bring wealth to the inventor, but prosperity and length of life to the nation. ”

“ New wants are mostly supplied by adaptation, not by creation or foundation. Something having been created to satisfy an extreme want, it is used to satisfy less pressing wants, or to supply additional conveniences. ”

“ Standardization and the control of technical processes which become more and more perfect with the increasing knowledge of scientific laws and mechanics fling the craftsman in ever increasing numbers upon the scrap heap and confiscate his precious possession, his particular little piece of property. ”

“ Our half or wholly imitative products are turned out as cheaply as possible, in substitute-materials, and are made as well or as ill as the relics of our craftsmanship permit, or as our existing machinery for the purpose is capable of. ”

“ Hence arises a demand for every sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or household furniture; for the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth, the precious metals, and the precious stones. ”

“ If I had the material to work with I would rather make new ones, than patch up the old ones: but as we have not the new materials to work upon, we must patch up the old ones. Patch up yourselves—make your characters comely to each other. ”

“ A little judicious use of a saw or a plane, a little attention to the finish, and we may have a thing of real beauty.
Finally, simplification gives us time to study the conditions under which the articles in use in our home are made, sold, cared for, and cleaned; and the willingness to have few things may make it possible to know that those we have were made under conditions that favored the health and happiness of the maker, and that those who care for them are neither overworked nor under-paid. ”

“ They lie deep in our national character and find expression year by year in every branch of handicraft, in every new device whereby the materials we so abundantly produce are subdued to the artisan's will and made to yield the largest, most practical, and most beneficial return. ”

“ He must show the practical relation of man to the world of matter, the basis of all our endeavours. Here he must set forth the duty of industry, of thrift, of temperance—the normal use of what Nature affords, or industry and thrift provides. ”

“ But these natural agents, though they add greatly to value in use, never add exchangeable value, of which M. Say is speaking, to a commodity: as soon as by the aid of machinery, or by the knowledge of natural philosophy, you oblige natural agents to do the work which was before done by man, the exchangeable value of such work falls accordingly. ”

“ Taken thus, products present themselves not merely according to their sources, but according to their value as well, as the syntheses of their productive elements. That product which requires them in greater quantity has the greater value. ”

“ In all sciences and arts there exists a quantity of material which is common property, which is disposed of now in one way, now in another. The majority of compendiums can be distinguished from each other only by the kind of paper, printing, the name of the publisher or bookseller, or by arbitrary changes in the arrangement and execution. ”

“ Each such product has its history: that is to say, it has been wrought only in time, and under the infinitely varied modifying influence of historical circumstances; each is different, therefore, from all the rest: a thousand different products, of every degree of diversity, but each one answering the same general purpose, and capable of being acquired and wielded by every normally constituted human being, of whatever race. ”

“ The spirit of Invention, one of the chief conditions in the production of material commodities, thus simply illustrated along the line of a single manufacture, may serve us for a sample of similar improvements taken and taking place in scores upon scores of other lines of effort and production. ”

“ First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. ”

“ Surely, that you are producing something—something useful to mankind. If you knew that a considerable proportion of what you produced would be thrown away, why you might just as well work a treadmill, or play golf, instead of ploughing or sowing, or making useful things, such as clothes or furniture. ”

“ The constant discoveries of new treasures in our material world, of gold, silver, iron, and copper, of states to be built up and of harvests to be sown and reaped, [Pg 24] are accompanied by corresponding discoveries concerning the variety of human gifts and their application to useful ends. What men and women can be good for may be more voluminously stated to-day than in any preceding age of the world's history. ”

“ Far from being immovable, the conception of property has been modified in the course of centuries, and there is no doubt that it will be further modified in the future ... and it is certain that it is now going to evolve in the direction of greater complication, to richer complexity. ”