Hacker Cinema
The Story of Stuff
2007 · Film · documentary · 22 min
Directed by Louis Fox
For most of the world, consumption has been the unquestioned duty of every individual. Then garbage activist Annie Leonard brought her two-hour lecture to Free Range who helped her turn it into a 20-minute animated revolution. Shown in thousands of classrooms, endlessly blasted by Fox News, viewed more than 10 million times, The Store of Stuff finally opens the door to a serious cultural dialog about the costs of consumption.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
From the top comment and others like it, it seems many of us are looking at this from a non-systemic viewpoint. Example:
> Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.
Except when you look at the logos that are on the waste, you see that they are all products made by Global North/Western companies (Coca Cola bottles, etc.). So is it really fair to blame workers who buy things in unsustainable packaging that is produced by a big company?
I love the short movie 'The Story of Stuff'. It does a great job of illustrating that we should focus on the point of production (and the pollution caused there by big companies), instead of looking at the point where we meet the products for the first time (on a shelf in a store).
The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
I have another solution: stop shipping so much junk around the world.
Watch the Story of Stuff https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff, the True Cost http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost, and films like them and it's hard not to conclude that reducing the amount of shipping by 75% or so would improve everyone's lives and Earth's capacity to support life and human society. Some industries would have to adjust -- mainly ones filling landfills and producing greenhouse gases.
The Story of Stuff site has the details, but something like 99% of stuff American's buy ends up in landfills within a year. Go to Craig's List free stuff and you'll see tons of stuff people can't give away every day. Just the tip of the iceberg.
A must watch video there about our consumer economy.
"The Story of Stuff Project was created by Annie Leonard to leverage and extend the film’s impact. We amplify public discourse on a series of environmental, social and economic concerns and facilitate the growing Story of Stuff community’s involvement in strategic efforts to build a more sustainable and just world. Our on-line community includes over 150,000 activists and we partner with hundreds of environmental and social justice organizations worldwide to create and distribute our films, curricula and other content."
Since one of the main points behind "The Story of Stuff" is that the electronics industry is driven by consumerist propaganda, and that the real cost of electronics comes from the lives of third world citizens, I don't find it surprising that they don't support Kindle. The movie is a little bit overboard, perhaps, but it has a definite anti-gadget flavor.
I highly recommend that you watch the film mentioned: "The Story of Stuff".
It is a very detailed look at how companies drive consumerism to keep the economy going at the expense of third world countries.