An atom-economical and environmentally friendly method to transform amino alcohols to amino acid salts using just basic water, without the need of pre-protection or added oxidant, catalyzed by a ruthenium pincer complex, is developed. Water is the solvent, the source of the oxygen atom of the carboxylic acid group, and the actual oxidant, with liberation of dihydrogen. Many important and useful natural and unnatural amino acid salts can be produced in excellent yields by applying this new method.