The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

        We live in a world of stuff. Not waste, necessarily, but certainly close to it. The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is a book-length project that developed from a 20 minute animation about where our stuff comes from and the devastating environmental impact of rampant consumerism. Throughout the book, Leonard documents the life cycle of a number of consumer goods, including everything from plastics to books to electronics. In terms of breadth, it’s hard to think of another book that covers so much ground—even if the sections that truly shine are the ones that go into some more depth.

Because our society is structured such as it is, it will be hard to truly accept and live by the central tenet of the book: we need to consume less. You’ve likely heard of the despiriting statistics. I am particularly struck by things like “How Many Earths.” If everyone were to live as people do in Canada and the United States, we would need to have 5.1 Earths’ worth of resources. Meanwhile, Earth Overshoot Day is the day each year when we have consumed nature’s resources and start dipping into reserves. This year was July 24th, by the way—barely halfway through the year. The statistics are harrowing.

Leonard offers some resources to help to curb our consumption or to verify the ‘ethical’ production of various goods (including plastics, diamonds, and so on). Our everyday practices as individuals, though, are insufficient for the kind of change needed. Even our mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle” only goes so far—and Leonard offers some compelling research about why recycling is actually the least effective and least important of the three. Recycling can be energy intensive and we need to get into distinctions between pre- and post-consumer recycling. Are the materials being used for the same kind of product? Are they being broken down and mixed into other forms for manufacture of other goods? At the end of the day, the only way out is to use less, but the existence of capitalism demands continually more production of goods.

Industries and policies need to change. It’s pretty disheartening that even when policies are brought into place by local or federal governments, they can still be superseded by global-level organizations like the WTO. The policies also demand enforcement that is not always forthcoming, though Leonard offers some wonderful examples of resistance. To that end, Leonard offered some really compelling commentary on the exploitation of Haiti, including the way the WTO’s regulations limit the viability of farming. Also, Philadelphia burned a bunch of waste in incinerators (don’t get Leonard started on incinerators!) and sent the ash to Haiti. This is not allowed, and the United States had to clean up the waste. Leonard documents going to the Mayor’s event in a kind of flash mob demanding action, and she followed a boat carrying waste to ensure they didn’t drop it anywhere it wasn’t meant to go. One port they stopped at mysteriously was ablaze and the waste had to continue its journey. Ultimately, they dumped it in the ocean—but they were brought to justice. Moments like that are inspirational, but we need continual pressure to ensure that polices are established and enforced.

The other two big ideas I think are worth exploring further are externalized costs and extended producer responsibility. As for externalized costs, those are all the resource costs that companies get away with using without paying for. For instance, the environmental costs or degradation to the natural world as a result of their manufacturing processes are not seen as something companies need to pay for. Essentially, the costs are externalized to communities that feel the impact while not impacting the company directly. As an aside, I appreciate that Leonard talks about economics and the GDP as an insufficient metric for measuring it. The GDP fails to account for resource loss and externalized costs and simplifies to the point of meaninglessness. The other key component that I think we need to advocate for is extended producer responsibility. This means that companies are responsible for the entire lifecycle of their goods. Environmental choices have often been displaced onto consumers (e.g. I could buy post-it notes or recycled post-it notes). EPR suggests that the company producing the goods needs to take responsibility for the post-consumer life of their products. Having EPR policies would be a complete gamechanger for how we create goods and distribute them.

Overall, The Story of Stuff serves as a great primer for key issues in consumption and environmentalism. The sheer number of topics Leonard covers—and the statistics themselves—are overwhelming. It’s unfortunate because on the one hand I want to really focus in on one aspect of waste and try to advocate for improvements, but the book also shows how interconnected all these policies are. It’s as though we need to take responsibility for everything because, really, we do. My hope is that having these conversations leads to direct action and I hope you’ll join.

Happy reading and advocating!