This International Women’s Day, we’d like to share words of wisdom from women who have committed themselves to protecting our planet. Through activism, education, policy change, or research, these women have significantly contributed to the well-being of people and the Earth across the world. Their efforts have shaped the way we view our relationship with nature and each other, and they continue to inspire countless individuals to take action for positive change. As we face interconnected environmental, human health, and social crises, their words and actions serve as powerful reminders that the future of our planet—and ourselves—depends on the choices we make today.
Aeshnina Azzahra
Notable for: Climate activism, using public awareness to prevent plastic pollution in Indonesian rivers with River Warrior Indonesia and calling on world leaders to stop the export of plastic waste from developed countries. Nina is also a Plastic Pollution Coalition Youth Ambassador.
Please stop waste colonialism. We, the youth, want to live in a healthy and plastic-free future. Let us play in a clean river and breathe in fresh air with no microplastics in it. I hope that with this INC, we can all open our hearts and minds to solve plastic pollution.
— Aeshnina Azzahra
Xiye Bastida
Notable for: Mexican climate justice activist who has participated in COP25, COP26, COP27, and COP28 and was invited as the only youth speaker at the Biden Climate Summit in 2021, where she spoke to 40 heads of state. Xiye is known for being a Plastic Pollution Coalition Youth Ambassador and Co-founder of Re-Earth Initiative, an international youth-led organization that focuses on highlighting the intersectionality of the climate crisis. Watch her call to climate action here.
Earth is our home, it gives you air, water and shelter. Everything we need. All it asks is that we protect it.
— Xiye Bastida
Berta Cáceres (1971–2016)
Notable for: A Honduran environmental and Indigenous human rights activist. She was the co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). Berta won a Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 for a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam at the Río Gualcarque. Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home in 2016 after receiving death threats for her work organizing to protect communities from development.
Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life.
— Berta Cáceres
Rachel Carson (1907–1964)
Notable for: A writer and biologist. Her influential book Silent Spring raised awareness about the dangers of pesticides and helped build the environmental movement.
Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.
— Rachel Carson
Sylvia Earle
Notable for: An oceanographer and marine biologist who has dedicated herself to protecting the world’s oceans and marine ecosystems. Known as “Her Deepness,” she holds the record for the deepest untethered walk on the seafloor and was the first woman to lead the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. She is the Founder of the Sylvia Earle Alliance (S.E.A.)/Mission Blue and a Plastic Pollution Coalition Notable Member. Watch her TED Talk and see her in Plastic Pollution Coalition’s June 2023 webinar.
No water, no life. No blue, no green. Yet we have this idea, we humans, that the Earth—all of it: the oceans, the skies—are so vast and so resilient it doesn’t matter what we do to it.
— Sylvia Earle
Jane Goodall
Notable for: Her groundbreaking work in primatology and conservation, especially her studies on chimpanzees and advocating for environmental sustainability. Jane founded the Jane Goodall Institute. Watch her Climate Week talk.
We can have a world of peace. We can move toward a world where we live in harmony with nature.
— Jane Goodall
Helena Gualinga
Notable for: An Ecuadorian environmental and human rights activist. She has exposed how oil companies are harming her Indigenous lands and her community to people both locally and globally. Follow her here.
We need more than a green transition. We need a new system where we put people and nature first.
— Helena Gualinga
Tara Houska
Notable for: A tribal attorney, Indigenous rights advocate, climate activist, and environmentalist focused on stopping oil pipeline. She participated in the resistance of the Line 3 oil pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and is part of the movement to defund fossil fuels. Watch her TED Talk.
Issues of climate change and protecting our Earth’s resources should not lie just on the shoulders of Native people. It should rest on all of our shoulders.
— Tara Houska
Hazel Johnson (1935-2011)
Notable for: Speaker and environmental activist. Known as the “Mother of Environmental Justice.” She spent years researching environmental contamination in Altgeld Gardens and linked industrial air, land, and water pollution to the negative health impacts on her community.
Every day, I complain, protest and object. But it takes such vigilance and activism to keep legislators on their toes and the government accountable to the people on environmental issues.
— Hazel Johnson
Winona LaDuke
Notable for: An environmentalist, author, economist, and Native American activist advocating for sustainable development, renewable energy, and Indigenous rights. She is a former board member of Greenpeace USA and serves as co-chair of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a North American and Pacific Indigenous women’s organization.
Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank.
— Winona LaDuke
Sharon Lavigne
Notable for: A special education teacher turned environmental justice activist, she founded RISE St. James Louisiana organized grassroots resistance to stop the construction of a $1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Watch Sharon Lavigne’s Story of RISE St. James Louisiana.
I am the example that it does not matter who you are or where you live—you can take a stand for what you believe in, especially when it is the right thing to do.
— Sharon Lavigne
Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
Notable for: A writer, civil rights activist, intersectional feminist, philosopher, and professor. She used her writing to emphasize the intersectionality in environmental causes, and to advocate for underserved communities.
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
— Audre Lorde
Wangari Maathai (1940–2011)
Notable for: Known as ‘Woman of the Trees’ and Founder of the Green Belt Movement, an environmental organization focusing on tree planting, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contributions to sustainable development, democracy, and peace.
It’s the little things that citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.
— Wangari Maathi
Vandana Shiva
Notable for: An Indian activist, environmentalist, and author focused on biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, and women’s rights. She is author of numerous books emphasizing the importance of protecting Earth for the wellbeing of all people, and in particular protecting biodiversity, ensuring a healthy and sustainable global food supply, and advocating for the rights of nature. Shiva is a Plastic Pollution Coalition Notable Member.
Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.
— Vandana Shiva
Greta Thunberg
Notable for: Founder of the Fridays for Future movement and a leading advocate for urgent climate action. She is the author of No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. At 16 years old, Greta was the youngest person to be chosen for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.
— Greta Thunberg
Alice Waters
Notable for: A chef, food activist, and environmental advocate who emphasizes sustainable and local food practices, she is a Notable Member of Plastic Pollution Coalition. Alice helped launch the farm-to-table movement and is founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard Project.
The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.
— Alice Waters
