STORY OF STUFF -- ANNIE

Annie Leonard makes some great points about the untenability of running our linear "materials economy" system on our finite planet, and she offers a little hope and a somewhat scattershot sense of direction at the end of her lecture.

The text book says “stuff move through a system: extraction – production – distribution – consumption – disposal.”

Annie spent 10 years travelling the world, tracking where are all the stuff come from and where the go and find what the text book says in not the whole story.

Here are my impressions on each aspect in The Story of Stuff:

EXTRACTION: She mentioned resources are limit to us and we are running out of resources. “Only 4% forest left in the USA, the USA is 5% of global population, but uses 30% of resources.”

PRODUCTION: Annie said “toxic in, toxic out” which means toxic produced in industrial production can result in toxic in home which is quite harmful to our body. Then Annie Leonard raised the freak-out level: We dip our pillows in BFR (brominated flame retardants), a horribly toxic man-made chemical, and we sleep on them! Now, The Story of Stuff said that women in the USA (and Canada, which the video didn’t mention) have the highest amounts of BFAs in their breast milk, compared to other countries.

DISTRIBUTION: A $4.99 radio – how is it so cheap? So many parts and processes to make the radio MUST cost much more than $4.99! What are the true costs of production?

CONSUMPTION: SHOP! We can always keep using 1% of our products and 99% will be trash. More consumer goods leads to less health care, less education, less safe transportation, less sustainability, less justice… People feel like they are in a circle that they always feel the products they currently have are bad and they need to buy some new products after watching so many advertisements on TV, then they go back work, trying to earn more money and go back shopping and watch TV again. I do feel like it is a true phenomenon, I just how silly we are we waste our time and do such a useless thing.

DISPOSAL: We burned some trash or did land fill which lead to the changing of our climate and we had created super toxic at the same time which is dioxin. Recycling is one way to protect the environment, but not enough.

After watching this video, I do realize the relationship between our products and our environment or the relationship between our products and us. In such a rapid developing era, technology is important, pollution is avoidable, but this is not an excuse. We should develop our economy build on how we can do best to protect our environment. Just as what Annie said in her video “people create it, we are people too.” People are smart, but I think we are over smart on this issue, that will be silly. Resources are limited; people’s health is the most important. Without people, money means nothing. Without resources, we will have few materials can be used to produce. If we choose to destroy the relationship between the environment and us and if we always choose to put profit at the first position, do not care people’s health. We must have to face the consequence one day. Everyone has the responsibility.