The Story of Stuff
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
I recently watched The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard, a 20 minute film about consumerism, its destructive effects, and a little eensy bit at the end about what we can do about it.
It is good—very well thought out and clearly presented. One thing I loved hearing about was how consumerism was designed into our economy as its driving force after World War II. This quote by economist Victor Lebow is astounding:
“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.”
Too bad Lebow’s predictive powers didn’t follow all the way through to how future generations were supposed to deal with the mess created by this idea ... but I digress.
It seems to me that this film was made to introduce people to the concepts of sustainability, and it mostly does a very good job of that.
But there is a bit in the intro, about 2 minutes in, where Leonard says “The government is there to take care of us. That’s its job.” That statement right there just turned off about a hundred gazillion people, including me. And most of the people who would be turned off by that statement? Are probably the ones who most need to watch the rest of this video, which really is excellent.
There’s also a bit where a diminutive government stick figure shines the shoes of the big fat corporation stick figure in a top hat, which made me giggle, but I’m not sure how many conservative types will stick around after that.
Maybe Leonard doesn’t care, but she should. Isn’t it possible that there are people who identify more with conservative, small-government values but still are interested in a better environmental paradigm? The choir understands the sermon already. It’s time to widen the circle.
Besides turning off non-liberals, I also don’t think it’s particularly useful to cast corporations in the role of villain. We are all in this mess together. Every person and every organization has a contribution to make.
In fact, giant corporations have the biggest potential to turn things around. I and everyone I know can be yurt-living vegans and still never have anywhere near the impact of Wal-Mart increasing the fuel efficiency of their truck fleet by 25%, as they are on track to do by the end of this year. Any solution for our future is going to require the full participation of industry, so why antagonize?
So much environmental rhetoric is full of this venom for corporations. I believe it’s a huge failing on the movement’s part for many reasons, but none more important than this: people do not respond as well to anger as they do to encouragement and inclusion. Ever have a boss who yelled at you vs. a boss who was nice to you? Who did you work harder for?
Corporations are made up of people, and people can be reached if you approach them in a way they can respond to. Accusing them of killing babies is probably not the most effective tactic.
What do you think about The Story of Stuff? Let us know in the comments.
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We watched The Story of Stuff a couple of months ago, and I found it thought provoking, albeit a bit reactionist. I agree 100% about your “now what” sentiment. The Story of Stuff should tell us how to change the system, how to really invent a new world for ourselves in light of the tools that we’re given today.
I also agree that corporations have the most power to enact change. Another great example is WalMart’s drive to sell only (yes, only) compact flourescent lightbulbs. The potential energy savings for such a bold move is astronomical. Although the consumer controls the market (in theory) its the big retail outlets that need to make the ethical choices about what products to stock and sell in their stores. For example, how many choices for brands of milk does your supermarket have? 2? 3? Are there any sold in recyclable glass containers? Oh, there are none? Why? Compare that with the number of brands of beer or wine or canned beans or ketchup or a thousand other items that come in glass or metal containers.
In so many cases, the consumer is left with a false impression of ‘choice’ when the spectrum of available products is determined by the purchasing department of the big retailers who are trying to second guess what we want!
steve! great to hear from you.
i really like what you say about the illusion of choice. grocery stores have a billion choices of some things (like breakfast cereal) but no grass-fed beef?
i think this might be changing, and i have to agree with you that wal-mart is doing some awesome stuff. they have a lot of bad karma to burn off, but they are working on it. and the best part is that it doesn’t even have to be about altruism—it can simply be about the bottom line. let’s let the powers of capitalism work for good and not evil!
if more than 90% of what goes into making the average product ends up being wasted, well that’s just a ridiculously huge opportunity for improvement. i couldn’t be happier to see manufacturers begin to take advantage of this, and i hope they make scads of money doing it, so then they’ll do it even more.
I’ve never seen The Story of Stuff, but that statement, “the government is there to take care of us” really sticks in my craw. I’m not sure I’m comfortable waiting around for some big benevolent government to take care of me. That’s kind of scary. If I thought the only power I had was to sit there and poke Mama Bear government with a stick until she wakes up to defend me I’d be feeling pretty hopeless.
I do agree that corporations have a lot of power to change things. There is a ton of room for improvement out there. I also think we as consumers have a lot of power if we’d only wake up and use it. The mainstream grocery store down the street has started to stock milk in recyclable glass bottles. They’re probably not doing it because they care. They’re doing it because people like me were shopping elsewhere. For the same reason they now have a large organic foods section.
In my area there’s a local brand of cage-free chicken that is farmed on family farms with no antibiotics. It costs about the same as the Tyson brand, so their cage-free, antibiotic free status is their way of distinguishing their product from Tyson’s. In the last year I’ve seen less and less of the Tyson chicken in the store and more and more of this other brand. Why? Because people are buying it.
Think of the recent made-in-china scandals. I knew so many people this Christmas who were looking for alternatives to the usual cheap, plastic junk because they were afraid of lead in their kids toys. People who generally don’t give a lot of thought to what they are buying. That forced corporations to take notice. Toys R Us sent out a mass e-mail to anyone who had ordered from them online adressing the subject. Suddenly I saw “green” and “non-toxic” toys on the shelves at Target. Local businesses that specialize in natural toys had a great year. We do have some power as consumers.
I think when you start talking about the evil of corporations, you wind up chasing your own tail. People want to be financially stable and find good investments so they can prosper. Corporations seek to maximize profit, in part to create those investment opportunities. Corps devoted to being ethical and green do not do as well as corps which externalize all their costs and pass on more profit to investors. So who is really “evil”? Corporations? Anyone who invests in the stock market solely for profit? Both? Neither? At least in part, the enemy is anyone with an index fund. Looked at from this perspective, I can see a role for government. Forcing corps to pay fairly for their externalities - pollution, human rights abuses, lack of end-responsibility for the products they make (non recyclable stuff), etc. - makes “brown business” less profitable. Therefore less desirable from an investment standpoint. The short n sweet: brown business exists because it pays.
Putting leg irons on brown business impacts “the economy”. Oh, the horror. When I really stop and think about it, The Economy is code for “an unchanged western lifestyle”. In truth, isn’t The Economy something that Needs to be impacted if we’re all going to survive on the planet?
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