The Story of Stuff

By: Nie Apriani

Have you watched the video “The Story of Stuff” series by Story of Stuff Project? In my opinion, these are a must watch video for every one who care about environment, humanity, and the future. 

If you want to know farther about Story of stuff project, please visit  http://www.storyofstuff.com/

On that website, you able to watch the videos, read the materials, and on top of that you permit to download all the videos story of stuff series and the materials.

Story of stuff divided to five series, they are; 1) story of stuff, 2) Story of Cap and Trade, 3) Story of Bottled Water, 4) Story of Cosmetics, 5) Story of Electronics. But I suggested you to watched “Story of Stuff” first before the other one, because this video is the preface of the others which will give you the information about the truth stories about the system that we are live.

In all of the videos, Mrs. Annie Leonard explained to us about what she had found after TEN YEARS traveling the world, tracking where our stuff comes and where it goes.  The method of her explanation is narration by her self, helped by an animation (a simple, cute and clear one) as a background to assist her explanation, she explained the complicated problem to the simple, interesting and easy understanding.

The important points of each video are:

Story of stuff

• Based on the text books that Mrs. Leonard read, our stuff simply moves along these stages: Extraction to Production to Distribution to Consumption to Disposal. In fact, after ten years she tried to find out the truth, those stages have a lot of missing part. More over, this system is a linear system but we live on a finite planet and impossible to run linear system on a finite planet indefinitely. In the reality, every step along interacting with societies, economics, and environment and within it, it’s bumping up against limit. But in this system, the limit is not clear or even there is no limit. There for, one of the most important things that is missing is people. People live and work all along this system.
• Government’s job is to watch out and take care of his people but since corporation have grown in size and power, and become more powerful than government, the concerned of government change  a little bit, to make sure everything is working out for the corporation than the people.
• In the first stage, extraction there is a lot of problem caused of this activity. In this stage, we chop the trees, we blow up the mountains to get the metal inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals. The problem is we’re using too much stuff and we’re using more than our share. The result is we’re running out of resources and the US response of this problem is taking someone else’s land. Guess what where is it? Yup, it’s Third World. They stole the resources, trashing the place and ignored the people who live there for generations. Lost the rights to access the resources refers to you don’t own the means of production so will not able to buy a lot of stuff. But in this horrible system, the rule is, if you don’t own or buy a lot of stuff, you don’t have a value.
• Next, the materials move to “production” stage. In this process, to make a product we mix the chemical toxic with the other material which takes from natural resources. The fact is today most of commerce synthetic chemicals haven’t been tested for synergistic health impacts. So, the rule is Toxic in, Toxic out. As long as industry keep putting the toxic in the product (almost all of the product that we use every day such as computer, phone cell, and even food, cosmetics, etc contained of toxic), human life and the environment in serious danger. Those toxics build up in the food chain and concentrate in human bodies. The highest levels of many toxic contaminant is concerned in human breast milk.
• A lot of toxic leaves the factory as a product but more leave as pollutions. The solution is to move dirty factories overseas, pollute some one else’s land. Where is it? Yup, it’s Third World (again). But thanks god, the air pollution carried by wind current back to the First World and the effect of global warming affect them too.
• After production is Distribution and distribution means “selling all this toxic contaminated junk as quickly as possible”. The goal is to keep prices down, keep the people buying, and keep the inventory moving.
• To keep prices down, they often do a cheat by “externalizing” the cost. In the process of production, they don’t pay the real cost such as using water, dumping waste, contributing in climate change, etc, and argue that all of them are external cost. In the other hand, they don’t pay enough the workers and skimp on health insurance make people and environment more suffered than before.
• The erosion of local environments and economies ensures a constant supply of people with no other option. As can be seen, not only resources that are wasted but also people.
• Consumption is the most important point of this system. The engine that drives the whole stage. That’s why they DESIGN how to make the people to be consumptive. The most effective of they strategies are:

1.       Planned obsolescence in other words “designed to dump”. It means they actually make stuff that is designed to be useless as quickly as possible and make a buyer buy a new one which a little newer, a little better, a litter sooner.

2.       Perceived obsolescence. Helped by advertisement and media in general, this strategies succeed make people who haven’t buy the new one which is more fashionable felt unconfident and throw away out of fashioned stuff even tough it is still perfectly useful.

• U.S national happiness is declining even tough U.S people has more stuff. Some analysis says that they have a less leisure time now in feudal Society and trap in the boring life cycle: working – going home (watching TV and poisoning by advertisement) – shopping – working –…
• Disposal. The toxic which contained in the stuff which gets dumped in a landfill, or it’s burned in incinerator and then dumped in the land fill (or you just throw away on the land, river, sea) are pollute the air, land, water, and change the climate change. Nowadays, many companies don’t want to deal with building landfills and incinerator in them area, so they just “export the disposal’’. Trashing the other land. 
• Much of the garbage can’t be recycled, either because it contains too many toxic or it’s actually unrecyclable.
• After we see the connection and see the big picture, the people who have the same dream to make a better living should get united so we can reclaim, transform the linier system in to better one that doesn’t waste the resources and people.
• The change doesn’t just happen by it self so let’s create something or do something that caused the change even just a little, because a little change will affect a bigger one.