the story of stuff December 7, 2007
Posted by deepali in budget, corporate america, environment, happiness, human rights, personal growth, poverty, work.trackback
Here is something to think about. Where do your material goods come from? Where do they go when you’re done with them? And what goes on in this whole process?
Free range studios has a great video on this issue: the story of stuff. Annie Leonard has spent the last 10 years following the chain from resource extraction to waste management. Luckily for us, she’s managed to consolidate everything she’s learned in a 20-minute presentation, with accompanying graphics. It’s easy to understand, and easy to get indignant about.
Here are some highlights:
1. “Cheap” goods are not cheap. Somebody is paying for the production of that item, and it’s not usually the consumer. Instead, it’s more likely the invisible forest, mountain, miner, factory worker, garbage man, or store clerk bundled up in this opaque process. The inevitable result is an unsustainable drain on the environment, local communities, infrastructure, and your budget.
2. The government is not doing a good job looking out for you. Annie believes in “for the people, by the people”. I think we all do. But that’s not what we get, usually. With MNCs running the planet, governments do all they can to appease those interests.
3. You work as hard today as serfs did in the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, we have less leisure time than ever, except possibly those folks who worked their fingers to the bone for close to zero gain 1000 years ago. Sure, we have more stuff, but aren’t actually any happier than they were. We may even be unhappier, because we have a whole lot more to worry about than they did.
4. You’ve been brainwashed. Commercials exist to tell you that your life is unfulfilled until you go out and get the latest consumer item (in the latest model). If you don’t, you won’t be happy. Never mind that the current version you have is perfectly fine – it’s nothing compared to the newest version, and all your friends know it. In business, they call this “perceived obsolescence”. There is also, of course, “planned obsolescence”, in which the item is deliberately engineered to be useless after a specified (short) amount of time. These are the twin pillars of the American economy (with the anthem being: “buy stuff! spend more! be American!”).
5. Recycling won’t save us. You could recycle everything that comes through your house, it won’t matter, because for every garbage bag-worth of stuff you save, 100-worth we used to make it (and they weren’t being recycled). In other words, the problem lies in two places: the front end of manufacturing, and the back end of demand.
6. We’re slowly killing ourselves (and taking everyone else with us). Annie doesn’t explicitly say this. But if we don’t do something to change our way of life, we’ll soon be in a lot of trouble.
7. But there’s hope! It’s not easy to change habits, but it can be done. There are so many big and little ways to do this, and maybe I can talk about that in a later post, but the main idea is simple – BUY LESS.
An interesting book about why we buy: Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.
It attempts to explain the how of countercultural symbols and practices become intergrated into the overall capitalist machine as goods and services that you can spend your money on. And that the mainstream status seeking that drives the economy is twinned by alternative forms of status seeking (including anti-capitalist status seeking) which spurn cultural innovation, change the mainstream, and fuel capitalism in turn (Apple Computers = “Think Different”).
I wonder what direction the green movement will take. Can consumer demand change the way corporations use energy and resources? Perhaps a demand for moral products will lead to the success of moral companies. (Google?)
However, buying less seems to be healthier for people and the planet. And how can a corporation make money from people buying less?
Buy less is quite a challenge when you consider that we live in a consumer oriented economy. Yet, I agree it is the answer. At least going “green” is a step in the right direction and maybe we can shift away from so many plastic non degradable items back to recylable paper products.
Osmaan,
Thanks for the book recommendation. Perhaps we can read it at a future book club meeting.
I think corporations can make money from people buying less… just not as much money. But how much money does one need to make, anyway?
[...] Posted by deepali on January 24, 2008 Starbucks has recently tested $1 coffee and free refills, in an effort to be more competitive with Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds. One dollar coffee. Does anyone else realize how absurdly cheap that is? I think, in our fast food nation, we’ve forgotten about the true cost of things. [...]
[...] Story of Stuff made me rethink [...]
my two cents:
One dollar coffee is not “cheap.” I make it at my house for about 15 cents, excluding the milk. I bring it to work in a jar leave it in the fridge, and microwave a cupful when I want some coffee at work.
that’s cheap.
You can eat a pretty well for $4 a day if you cook all your own food and beverages. After you’ve done that for a while, you will start to see takeout coffee for the luxury that it is. I do get it sometimes, but i don’t think of it as “cheap” but as “expensive”. Particularly when you add the ‘add-on’ cookie or pastry that I associate with the coffee shop experience, a trip to the local cafe costs $3 or more, and if you get a specialty coffee drink it will cost more than my usual cost for food for the day.
if you look at it a certain way $1 coffee is exorbitantly priced.