A couple years back my husband tried to get me to watch this short movie he had downloaded off the internet. It was twenty minutes long and it was called “The Story of Stuff.” I remember being uninterested in watching, or not making it through the entire thing (!) and forgetting about it soon after.
Cut to a 2010 and I’ve changed my tune in terms of paying attention to our dwindling earthly resources and the part I play in this whole mess. Annie Leonard, who authored the original video, has turned the ideas into a full-length book. Beginning with extraction and moving through production, distribution, consumption and disposal, Leonard tells the entire story of the “stuff” that inhabits our daily lives. I will never look at a plastic cup the same after reading this book. I will never look at an aluminum can the same. I will never look at a cup of water the same. And who knew that people are dying in the Democratic Republic of Congo so that westerners can have coltan for their cell phones and Sony Ps2 game consoles–ugh.
But when things are this dire, ignorance is anything but bliss. 
“My goal with this book (and the film upon which it’s based) is to unpack the Story of Stuff–the flow of materials through the economy–as simply as possible..” says Leonard in the introduction. And she does just that, breaking down complicated ecological and scientific terms and concepts into something even a lughead like me can understand.
Something else I like is that Leonard offers solutions. While the issues facing the world today (compounded exponentially lately with the BP/Federal Government caused oil spill choking the Gulf of Mexico) seem irreversible at times, Leonard argues that there is still time to make change.
“In the face of so many tough challenges, there are many exciting and hopeful developments that I celebrate in these pages and that I see as steps toward a truly sustainable ecological-economic system. Above all, I invite the citizen in you to become louder than the consumer inside you and launch a very rich, very loud dialogue within your community,” Leonard writes. In addition, while she does push for the voting, citizen-action model that I find increasingly useless as the government reveals itself to be completely in bed with the corporations, I do like that Leonard allows space for a critique of capitalism and the idea that the economy (and with it the bloodthirst for resources) can continue growing forever.
I highly recommend The Story of Stuff for anyone who wants to learn more about where all of the things around us come from and why consumption has come to live up to its meaning, as it lays waste to the earth, our minds, and our bodies.
