Happy New Year. Have you heard the Story of Stuff?
Someone sent this to me over the holidays – actually a couple of people sent it to me, so you may have seen it, too. I thought it was a wonderful gift to receive and a pretty appropriate time to show up during the ‘consumer-ccentric’ holiday season.
If you haven’t seen it, take 2 minutes and 37 seconds to watch Chapter 1 here.
It’s an informative and easy to comprehend, but important, video that explores consumerism’s effect on our environment.
If your like most American’s, you probably know the effect of spending on your wallet, but if you haven’t thought about how it effects our planet, then you might be surprised.
The Good News is Annie Leonard (and the people who put this together) offer solutions for Another Way – easy, everyday, attainable solutions to help us change a system in crisis to one that works for all of us. If you want to watch the full 20 min video try the Story of Stuff website (it was down at the time of this post, but I am sure it will be back up soon, or so I hope). But you can always catch the individual chapters on YouTube, as well: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FreeRangeStudios
Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this video, so post a comment below.
Bethany said,
January 21, 2008 @ 4:24 am
I know I probably shouldn’t just comment on my own post, but if you do read this, thought I’d mention I showed this video to my nieces (on youtube) and they actually sat through the whole thing (well, it’s not that long, but this shows if they could watch it you can, too)!
I was quite surprised and grateful that they amused me, until I asked them what they thought and one said, “Well, we might as well keep buying things, because they aren’t gonna stop making it just because I stopped buying.”
To which I said, “Maybe they won’t if it is only you who stops, but when you stop, you can choose to speak to others about why you made that choice. Also remember, there are individual people working to change each part of the current system. This means more and more people are getting involved, which I personally hope will eventual make a difference…”
I left it at that, because I didn’t want to keep preaching. After all, I do know they are intelligent enough to ponder the ideas on the Story of Stuff and I won’t be surprised if they do share it with their friends. After all, they were probably just riding me when they said that in the first place. And I think we all know I’ll be finding more to share with them on the subject, anyway. Hope you do, as well…