When it comes to stuff, I’m with Annie

Tamara Harbar
Going Green

About a year ago, an e-mail popped into my inbox with a link to a video called The Story of Stuff. The video turned out to be friendly, easy to absorb and it changed my understanding of our economic system.

Given this fall’s economic crash, it’s a timely story to share. Bear with me while I re-tell a crunched and condensed version the way all the best stories are told….

“Once upon a time, people invented something called the ‘materials economy.’ They took natural resources from the earth to make products. They distributed products to stores so people could buy them.

“In a materials economy, people have to keep buying more and more stuff. After the Second World War, a retail analyst named Victor LeBow said, ‘Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.’

“Stuff had to be cheap, too. Some people in the materials economy were paid very little. Some factories were built in poor countries without a lot of rules or protection for labourers. Instead of going to school, kids in poor countries worked with toxic chemicals to make cheap radios and cell phones.

“Product designers thought up ‘planned obsolescence.’ To make people shop more, they made stuff that didn’t last.

“They also dreamed up ‘perceived obsolescence.’ Designers created new versions of perfectly useful stuff people already had, like computers and shoes. Ads made people feel unhappy if their clothes, furniture and cars weren’t new and fashionable, so people would go shopping to feel happy again.

“But people were less happy than they were 50 years before. Some people had to take pills to feel happy.

“The earth started running out of natural resources, too. Eighty percent of the forests were gone. In the Amazon, two thousand trees were being destroyed every minute.

“Some people started feeling sick because toxic chemicals were used to produce stuff. One chemical, brominated flame retardant, was toxic to their brains, but they put it in computers and couches, even on mattresses and pillows. Toxic chemicals started showing up in mothers’ milk.

“Landfills filled up with used and unwanted stuff. Burning stuff just polluted the air with a new super-toxin called dioxin.

“A woman called Annie Leonard made a video about The Story of Stuff. It won an award and millions of people watched it.

“Annie said people devised the materials economy and people could change it if they wanted to. It’s not like gravity, she said!

“People could choose sustainability, zero waste, and renewable energy. People could intervene to save forests, have fair trade, labour rights, and conscious consumerism, rather than wasting resources – or people.  

“Annie thinks if people worked together to change the materials economy, they’d find a way to live happily ever after.”

I’m with Annie on this and I’m all for a shot at “happily ever after.”

•••

Next week, I’ll write about how to have a Christmas that would be fair to the earth and the people on it. We’ll talk about more – I mean, less – stuff.

And please watch Annie’s video at www.storyofstuff.com. She tells the story much better than I do.