Annie Leonard’s flash video on the Story of Stuff puts all the things you probably knew about our world system of production and consumption into a straightforward 20-minute video that shows how broken this system really is.
Just a few excerpts:
- our national identity has become one of consumers; not teachers or farmers, but of consumers. After 9/11, Bush told us to shop.
- only 1% of the products we buy are in use 6 months after we purchase them
- the average U.S. person consumes twice as much as he/she did 50 year ago
- Shopping is really the only part of the system that consumers see; and advertising and retail embellish this view; We’re rather blind to resourcing, production, or disposal
- For every 1 can of trash a consumer disposes of, there’s an estimated 70 cans upstream created by the production process to make the things in that trash can (hmm… I’d still like to see the math on this one)
