Annie Leonard is our hero this week. Why? She’s been traveling the globe for 10 years to find out where all our stuff, our consumer goods, our bling comes from, and where it goes when we get rid of it. Why did she do that? Because she’s a hero. Like Captain Planet.
What did she find out? Watch her video, sponsored by Tides Foundation and Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption: The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It’s a 20-minute video about our “materials economy;” our system of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and lastly, disposal. According to Leonard, the system is linear and the planet is finite, and you can’t run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely. Ow, my math skills.
Think of the linear “materials economy” system like an endless length of yarn. If you wrapped that yarn around and around the Earth, you would eventually cover the whole thing. Our planet can regenerate (like, absorb string), but not fast enough to prevent the yarn from covering it completely. So, stop using so much stuff or we’ll become a galactic ball of yarn.
The video definitely attempts to inspire us by deterrence; telling us how badly we’re doing and how it’s getting worse. As I have explained, I don’t think trying to depress someone into action is very effective, but the information she has collected is impressive. She relays it engagingly and succinctly.
Extraction is the harvesting of raw materials from the Earth. We do it too much, and we do it at the expense of human lives. Production is where we take those materials and make them into “stuff.” Leonard notes that if we put toxic materials into our stuff, our stuff is toxic. Did you know that there might be neurotoxic flame retardants in your bedroom pillows? Yikes.
Distribution is the part where we sell the stuff at Wal-Mart. Leonard explains, admirably, how on Earth can a radio cost only $5. A whole radio. That’s a complicated little device. She delves into a concept called “externalized costs,” and proceeds to show us how that radio was paid for by someone’s future. I told you it was depressing. Consumption. We use up the stuff. This is where Leonard and I disagree a bit, when she talks about fashion being some big conspiracy to make us buy more stuff. I see what she’s saying, but she seems to have forgotten that fashion is an art, and an arts community. Fashion is a natural development in human progress, from the days they were picking out which leaves to wear in Eden and how to tie them on. Could we do fashion better, greener, and more sustainably? Sure. What couldn’t we do better, greener, and more sustainably? Leave fashion alone!
Disposal. Lastly, Leonard explains why recycling isn’t enough and why incinerators are bad. Our system totally blows. It blows dioxin. Leonard encourages us to take a look at our system, which has been festering this unhealthy way since the 1950s (longer by my count, but she’s the expert). She reminds us that we, the human race, made this system. It didn’t just happen, it’s not like gravity. We made it this way and we can change it.
I say let’s start with education. Send the video to everyone you know, especially teachers and kids. And then? Use less stuff.