'Story of Stuff' a must-see for material Scrooges
Do the halls of malls give you a case of the jingle hells? You could kick back for a 20-minute break from rampant consumerism to learn more about the toxic mess it makes of the planet.
Fun, right? Actually, it is with The Story of Stuff. It's a short, friendly movie covering the ABCs of consumer culture. The sky may be falling, but we can prop it up, the film suggests.
The Story of Stuff was produced by Free Range Studios, makers of the Meatrix. That entertaining, animated diatribe against factory farming has attracted more than 15 million viewers. The studio's (Grocery) Store Wars parody has been seen by some 10 million people.
Released just several weeks ago, The Story of Stuff has already enjoyed 416,760 unique visitors. Its makers hope that Stuff might similarly leave a lasting impression that spurs people to rethink their role in a pollution-based economy.
Sure, call it eco-propaganda. Yet, the facts in Stuff are well-researched and cited.
Writer and host Annie Leonard is an environmental activist who has spent two decades touring dumps and factories around the world. The Sustainability Funders and Tides Foundation provided funding.
The first chapter is embedded below, or check out the full 20 minutes at StoryofStuff.com.
However, it might be wise to include a disclaimer on these types of posts that say, "We are not responsible for any surprise guilt or resentment you might feel at the suggestion that this lifestyle we all enjoy might not be the most responsible in the long run. If you feel shortness of breath, panic, or similar symptoms, close this window immediately and visit the web site of your nearest energy or and manufacturing lobby, and assure yourself that there is no cause for alarm."
1) They misinterpretted some head of economy's quote. He was talking about the purpose of ECONOMY, not government. Economy is not there for healthcare, better roads, or anything. It there's to make money. Money that can be USED for those needs.
2) 1% of everything is thrown away after six months. Oooh... how surprising! I usually keep all the food that I buy. Which, by the way, is the overwhelming majority of what people buy. Not everyone has money to waste on non-neccessities. Other neccessities include toilet paper, batteries, general-use paper, etc. Out of all purchases, stuff that can even be used for more than 6 months probably takes up 3% at best.
3) 30% of Congolese children drop out of school to mine some random mineral. I find that extremely hard to believe. The Congo is a huge country. How do they know WHY Congolese children drop out of school? If we are to believe this documentary, some people actually went into that war-torn country, learned Congolese, and actually surveyed every child (or I guess they could've taken an EFFECTIVE sample) and asked each child why they dropped out of school, and 30% said they did it to mine some resource. Unlikely.
4) Bush told people to shop? When...? And what's with the "instead of" nonsense? All of the things they mentioned in their "instead of" were things Bush actually did. I'm no friend of our President, but these guys clearly have an agenda to push because they are incorrectly portraying Bush.
5) Thrift was only valued 50 years ago? That hasn't changed a bit. Our culture still values thrift, as it has for the last 300 years. Why do you think we glorify entrapeneurs (sp?) like we do?
6) There interpretation of the computer is subjective and messed up. First of all, since when was the processor the most important component? At this point, the processor is the least dynamic component of a computer. If you look at benchmarks, you'll realize that. And furthermore, the processor socket doesn't change that often... only about every 2-3 generations.
7) What is this about a person's value being defined by what they by? That is NOTHING like the culture I know. A person's value is defined by how they act and their personality, usually.
8) She was talking about how the media influences the US... she IS the media, in case nobody realized that. What makes her any better?
9) National happiness is going down? That's subjective. Happiness is hard to measure and was measured in different circumstances fifty years ago. And how do we know that has anything to do with consumer culture? Correlation does not mean causation.
10) Less leisure time is because of our culture. We value hard-workingness, so we tend to devote more time to work.
11) Fireproofing toxins hurt us? Unless you ingest this stuff, it's harmless. And the small amounts used to coat products are also harmless. You'd probably have to eat like four pillows to even get any ill effects. They have no sources, so we can't confirm this.
12) Dioxin is the most toxic manmade substance? My ass. How about botulinum toxin? That stuff is much worse. And don't say it's bacteria made, because we are manufactering those bacteria for our own purposes. Badly-sourced facts like this are why I find this documentary hard to believe.
12) They want us not to burn the trash, yet reduce the landfills. Burning trash reduces landfills like 80%. If we stop burning trash, we'll need four more landfills for every one we have now. If we do both reduce landfills and stop incinerating trash, we'll need to trash like 1/5 of what we currently do. Sound reasonable?
13) Who says those 70 cans made by the factory aren't recyclable? They aren't any more of an obstacle to the effectiveness of recycling than the trash we throw away.
14) What is this about "taking back our government"? Apparently we're all Bush's pawns...? I'm no Republican, but I hate it when people say stuff like that. Our government's in our hands, we just like to make poor decisions regarding it.
- Leonard's story is NOT well researched
- by development aid guy December 29, 2007 11:52 AM PST
- This video post is symptomatic of the environment lobby's attitude toward facts: oil, car, chemical, gun, tobacco (read: "evil") businesses be crucified if they lie to the public, but it's ok for us to be liberal with the truth (or truths, for in political science their name is legion),
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(4 Comments)because we are fighting for a good cause. Note to Elsa Wenzel: Leonard's story is NOT well researched. Not at all. The post below makes several important points. I'll add a few extra spoilers:
1. Leonard is bashing the throwaway culture (mentioning DVDs in particular), yet her video is only available for streaming (no downloading) or by order on... DVDs.
2. Doesn't streaming her fancy video require retiring all those old 56K modems and setting up video-capable bandwidth, all while consuming a fair amount of "stuff" in the process?
3. Didn't "touring the world to find out about how stuff is extracted, produced, distributed, consumed, and disposed of" require a bit of air travel?
Nothing anti-environmental here. There is a difference between between mindless propaganda, which doesn't help anyone, and educating people so they could make genuinely informed decisions about how they interact with the environment.