I read about Annie Leonard the other day and thought I would share her story with you. She is an advocate of sustainability, but she carries it one step further – she is also a critic of excessive consumerism. Yes, Annie thinks we all have too much stuff!
Annie created and narrated a short documentary about the life-cycle of material goods titled “The Story of Stuff.” In the documentary, which made its debut on December 4, 2007, Annie talks about our everyday stuff, how we love to and are encouraged to shop, and how “stuff” is created and where it goes when we get rid of it. She spent 10 years tracking this life-cycle and visited over 40 countries. She talks about factory workers, the government, and corporations. Did you know that of the 100 larges economies on Earth, 51 are corporations? Yes, that is right – more than half. She also went into something called “extraction,” which means using resources such as trees, mountains, animals, and water to make stuff and how these resources are running out. The Amazon is losing 2,000 trees a minute – A MINUTE! She mentions that forty percent of America’s waterways now contain undrinkable water. Annie also points out that Americans have only 5% of the world’s population, but we are using 30% of the world’s resources.
Annie also pointed out how using all these resources to make our “stuff” is harming people. She talked about synthetic chemicals and how we have no idea how most of them interact with other chemicals we come in touch with every day. She touches on B.F.R.s (brominated fire retardants), a fire retardant chemical that is a neuro-toxin that can be found in computers, mattresses, and pillows. That’s right, someone is so concerned about our heads catching on fire that they put a chemical on the pillow we sleep on for eight hours a night that is toxic to our brain. Annie goes on to talk about how even if we recycled everything we use, it wouldn’t be enough to save the world and its resources. Scary stuff, huh?
Now of course, you cannot believe everything you hear. Many people find this documentary to be not only anti-consumerism, but also anti-American. You may want to watch the video (it can be found at The Story of Stuff website) and judge for yourself. Wikipedia has a listing of some of the things Annie mentions and the resource from which she got her statistics. A book based on the documentary is scheduled to be released in March 2010.