By Kirsten Bokenkamp

The chance that Congress will pass a US climate change bill before the global summit in Copenhagen is looking increasingly slim, but that does not stop us from individually minimizing our own impact on the earth. Green-up Your Life! is all about reminding us that as individuals, we can, and should, do our part to protect our planet and combat climate change – even when our policy makers are not quite there. Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling are a big part of the things we all can do. Today’s blog is going to focus on the first two (and most important) parts of this well-known mantra: Reduce and Reuse.

In our society, where we covet big houses and new cars, where we are impressed with shiny toys and with the newest fashions, not everybody likes to hear this, but simply reducing what we buy is one of the best things we can do for the planet. In his New York Times blog Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin asks if being a “green consumer” is good enough: after all, even when corporations are selling environmentally sustainable products, they are still selling consumerism, and their primary goal is not to save the planet, but instead to get you to buy more new things.

And, generally, the more we buy – the more we waste. Think about all of the packaging and the transport associated with everything we buy! According to the EPA, between 1960 and 2007 the amount of waste each person creates has almost doubled from 2.7 to 4.6 pounds per day. Reversing this trend is crucial to the future of the earth.

If you have never seen Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, I highly recommend that you spend 20 minutes watching it to learn more about the processes of production and consumption within our society. By the end of the short, fun, and interactive film, you most likely will have a different view on buying things. Do you love to give gifts? Rethink how you give, and how it impacts the earth. Good alternative ideas include a gift certificate to a massage or yoga classes; tickets to a concert or football game; a batch of fresh baked cookies; a dinner out at an environmentally sustainable restaurant; renting a kayak for a day out on the water; or simply spending some time together, cooking or playing games. A study about happiness during the Christmas season, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Happiness Studies, has shown that:

Lower well-being occurred when spending money and receiving gifts predominated. Engaging in environmentally conscious consumption practices also predicted a happier holiday, as did being older and male. In sum, the materialistic aspects of modern Christmas celebrations may undermine well-being, while family and spiritual activities may help people to feel more satisfied.

Tommy Sheep

If all this talk about reducing sounds good to you, use the day after Thanksgiving, historically the largest shopping day in the US, to make a point. In 65 countries around the world, millions of people participate in Buy Nothing Day to demonstrate that we don’t have to buy all the newest fashions and the brightest toys just because they are endlessly marketed to us. It is actually pretty empowering to decide to ignore all the marketing schemes. Check out these spoof ads by Adbusters, and imagine how much less we would collectively buy if all ads were as honest as these. (There are more funny ones on their website).

True Colors of Bennetton

Buying less does not mean not buying anything at all. Just try to keep your impact low, and reuse items when you can. Have you checked out your neighborhood thrift store or consignment shop? Most have clothes, toys, household items, shoes, and books. Check it out – you may be surprised. There are about 6,000 reuse centers around the US, ranging from specialty stores to Goodwill. Another alternative is to buy lightly used items on Craiglist or ebay. You can’t really go wrong when you are saving money and helping to preserve the earth’s resources.

Even if we cut down on what we buy, of course we will all still buy many things. Reducing and reusing isn’t just about less consumerism and buying used items. It is also about bringing reusable bags to a store, drinking from a reusable coffee cup or water bottle, not using the mini-bottles of shampoo at hotels; reducing the amount of packaging you use by buying food in bulk, and reducing paper by printing on both sides, paying bills online and getting yourself off of unwanted mailing lists. Do you wonder what kind of impact this could have?

• If every Starbucks customer used a reusable coffee thermos, we could save 1,181,600 tons of wood, 2,040,061,237 pounds of carbon dioxide, and 4,441,093,624 gallons of water every year.
• The production of plastic water bottles in the US generates more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, and uses 17 million barrels of oil per year! And that is not even taking into account what happens to all those bottles once they reach the landfill. (In the U.S. more than 30 billion plastic water bottles are discarded each year. Only 15% are recycled; the rest end up in landfills, or as litter – 66 million every day.)
• According to the World Watch Institute, each year Americans throw away some 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags. (Only 0.6 percent of plastic bags are recycled.) If every shopper took just one less bag each month, this could eliminate the waste of hundreds of millions of bags each year.
• Producing one ton of paper requires 2-3 times its weight in trees. If the entire U.S. catalog industry switched its publications to just 10-percent recycled content paper, the savings in wood alone would be enough to stretch a 1.8-meter-high fence across the United States seven times.

These facts clearly show that we can all make a difference by changing our habits – even just a bit. It is unrealistic to think that we will all stop buying things, but if we reduce what we do buy, buy used items when we can, and try to reduce the negative side effects of consumerism by choosing products with less packaging and bringing our own shopping bags, it is a step in the right direction. We need to start thinking before we make purchases and stop buying things we don’t need, which is a tough thing to do in a society where people living in cities are exposed up to 5000 advertisements a day. It is time to show those companies that in order to protect our planet, we will not give in so easy!

More haunting than the scariest movie.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Having read all of the exciting press coming off last year’s Opportunity Green conference, I was looking forward to attending this year’s event, held in sunny Los Angeles, CA.  Heralded as one of the top green business conferences in the industry, OG09 promised to be a forum to gather with leaders of the business world to discuss not just our shared idealism towards a more sustainable planet but our determination to succeed in a green economy.

My excitement on the front end was met with some disappointment the day of the actual conference and I’m sad to say that for the most part, I was underwhelmed.  The opening keynote included a talk by Chris Jordan, an artist famous for his portraits of waste in mass culture.  While I admire Chris’ work and passion for revealing the consequences of our modern world, I tend to get more annoyed than inspired during those types of lectures.  He showed photographs depicting our daily use of plastic cups and the tragic death of albatross on Midway Island due to significant plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean.  In fact, he played a 6 minute long video showing carcass after carcass of albatross that had mistaken plastic for food and died with massive quantities of it in their bellies.

Sad, right?  Of course.  It’s horrible.   But did I travel across the country to be shown pictures (that I’ve seen many, many times – it’s a popular image for green conferences) accompanied with severely depressing violin music?  Not really.  I’m in this room because I am all too aware this is a problem.  I’m in this room because I am afraid of what the future looks like for my children and their children and I want to solve this problem, or at least try.  I’m too motivated and there’s too little time to sit around and grieve, which is what Chris suggested we need to do for our planet.

We don’t need to grieve.  We absolutely need to acknowledge what we have done to this planet.  But like any problem in life, dwelling on how wrong it all is begins to sound like broken record.  Yes! It’s wrong.  How do we make it right?  Grief will not heal us.  I am sure of this.

At any rate, the conference had its moments of redemption for sure.  My favorite panel was Modern Storytelling with Annie Leonard of Story of Stuff and Jonah Sachs of Free Range Studios.  If you haven’t seen Story of Stuff, you should go watch it right now.  Annie is a brilliant storyteller who spent 2 decades researching the materials economy and uncovering what happens to all of our stuff throughout its lifecycle. Jonah and his team at Free Range helped Annie turn her research into a smart, witty and informative 20 minute documentary with an attempt to illuminate some of the issues within the materials economy including massive waste and overconsumption.

Working in communications, I appreciate Annie’s no BS approach to tackling a problem and presenting information to people who have predisposed conceptions about the world.  As she advises, “talk to people where they’re at – not where you’re at.”  The discussion centered around the concept of authentic communication, opening up dialogues and not trying to control the conversation once it’s out.

She closed the session with this piece – “Change is inevitable, the question is whether it will be by design or by default.”  It is the perfect summary of the choices we have now, the decisions we make towards a more sustainable world and what we need to keep at front of mind when we approach this revolution.

While I met some very interesting people at OG09 and was thrilled to see Annie Leonard speak live, I left with an overall feeling that has accompanied me at the end of many green centric conferences or expos – concerned at our ability talk about the problem in depth but our inability to provide comprehensive, deep solutions.  Right now, green conferences tend to include those of us who are dark green – we believe it, we know we’ve got to change, we’ve dedicated parts of our lives to so.  While seeing and hearing stories about the breadth of the problem can be inspiring, too much of it becomes time consuming and ineffective.  We need an active campaign, not a passive one.  I want to attend a conference that starts that campaign.

Posted by: Ashley / follow me on Twitter

The interior of the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street. In the Victorian style, it's cluttered with stuff. (Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr account of practicalowl)

Here’s an article written by a professor in my academic department, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin. I haven’t yet had her in class; she’s on sabbatical this semester.

In this she’s written the most complete, historically accurate magazine-format depiction of planned obsolescence I’ve ever read. And I’ve read several great ones.

Planned obsolescence is, in my own words, designing something to wear out, give out, or otherwise become unusable or out of style after a certain amount of time. Which prompts the consumer to buy another.

It hasn’t always been around; in fact, it has only governed business practices in the last 80-90 years, and, arguably, the vast majority of it has popped up in the last 40 years.

In my opinion, it’s dishonest. In most cases, we (well, industrial engineers) know how to make stuff last, say, ten or a hundred times as long as it “normally” lasts in our experience. Why don’t we? People like to make money.

Obviously it’s destroying our planet, and to a certain extent, our souls, if you believe in that kind of thing. I like good product design as much (and probably a lot more) than the next guy, but what happens to our humanity if we’re never satisfied with what we have?

One man asked that and came up with the “100 Thing Challenge,” where he sold, donated, or put into storage all his possessions except a carefully-chosen 100 things—for one year. He got coverage by Time magazine online and now has a book deal with Harper Perennial.

My sister today said something like “I’m against the production of new stuff.” She thinks the world has everything it needs, and if we just passed it all around—Freecycle, that sort of thing—we’d all be better off.

I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way.

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Buy stuff that lasts; it only makes sense! My parents have been married for over 50 years, and the Sunbeam toaster they received as a wedding gift still works! Now that is a well made product. Built to last. Quality. Inspires the marriage. Unfortunately, most products today are “built to trash”. In a recent cover story from “In These Times”,  Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin asks whether ‘heirloom design’ could be the cure for our mass consumer consumption and waste.

According to the full article, “The manufacture, distribution and disposal of an ever-growing mountain of short-lived consumer goods has taken an enormous environmental toll. Annie Leonard’s website “The Story of Stuff,” which has garnered more than 7 million views in less than two years, has helped spread awareness of that cost far beyond the usual environmentalist circles.”

According to Lizabeth Cohen, chair of the History Department at Harvard University, “In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a much closer connection between consumer demand and factories and jobs.” Perhaps what came after was mixed with a bit of greed and ignorance, but it was smart business at the time. Or so it seemed. It was American Ingenuity that got us into this mess.

It was during the period immediately before and after World War II, when a demand-driven economy was seen as the key to our nation’s recovery and prosperity. We began to develop this economy where we must continue to consume in order to ensure our economic prosperity. Short-sighted? Ignorant of the renewability of natural resources and the effects of pollution? Without a doubt.

We have set ourselves up where locally, regionally, and nationally, we are dependant upon a consumer economy. That means that we must continue to consume in order to maintain our way of life. This is contradictory to the cycles of nature. We cannot sustain this system. It is time to look for quality more than quantity. It is time to look for service, rather than product. It is time to look outside the box and use that amazing and inspiring American Ingenuity to re-invent our economy into a more sustainable model. This will ensure the success of us all. Societies have risen and fallen throughout history. We have opportunity; we must remain observant and continue to evolve in order to survive.

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Sou quase tiete do Tio Obama (ao menos por enquanto).
Mas fiquei decepcionada por ter sido ele o agraciado com o Nobel da Paz.
O premio existe para premiar os melhores feitos, e sinceramente, Tio Obama ainda não trabalhou o suficiente para merecer o Nobel da Paz. A decisão me pareceu muito mais política e diplomática do que realmente justa.
Com isso, é mais uma instituição internacional que perde minha estima e consideração. 

Falando em homens de governo, instituições e etc, segue um vídeo que o Juliano me deu a dica. Uma maneira bem didática de enxergar macroeconomia.
O primeiro é o original, em inglês e o segundo é a versão em português (dublagem é uma coisinha “terrivi”)

original (inglês):

versão brasileira (TV UOL):
http://videolog.uol.com.br/video.php?id_video=353307

Abraços
Lapin-Mère
21/10/2009

O vídeo Story of Stuff, escrito pela ambientalista Annie Leonard, explica o processo pelo qual os produtos passam até chegar em nossas casa, e ainda aponta dados e informações sobre a quantidade de material que é produzida nessa cadeia de consumo.

O vídeo é bem explicativo apesar dos seus 21 minutos de duração. Essa versão é inteira e legendada.

Esse vídeo também foi recomendação do nosso leitor, Sebatian Valle.

Anytime I’m tempted to go shopping I think I’ll just watch this little video. Awesooome:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I’ve mentioned the Story of Stuff before, as a quirky little video that introduces many of the problems with consumerism. It’s come in for a bit of an attack recently, and Mark has been engaging with the debate over at Breathe. Definitely worth a read, although you might want to watch the video, and its indignant riposte first.

An environmentalist named Annie Leonard, formerly with Greenpeace, made a video ostensibly for environmentalists that is now being shown to many school children.  As Lee Doren’s critique shows, it is almost pure propaganda.

This video is part 1 of 4, the rest are available on Lee Doren’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/HowTheWorldWorks

7:00 hour, which is worse:

6:00 hour, toilet paper:

8:00 hour:

Here is Drew Johnson’s take on the Story of Stuff.

Earlier this month I wrote an article about ObamaDay at the public schools, in which Barack Obama gave a speech and the Department of Education provided an ideological lesson plan to give to teachers courtesy of the Obama White House.  Shortly after I wrote another one to shout back at the left who thought conservatives had gone way over the top by pointing out that Democrats had literally tried to criminalize a similar speech George H.W. Bush gave.

I tell you what.  I was utterly wrong.

I didn’t know the TENTH of how blatantly evil the left was when it came to deliberately indoctrinating public school children.

Let’s begin with the most vile piece of indoctrination and “Dear Leader-worship” that this country has probably ever seen from B.Bernice Elementary school in Burlington Township, New Jersey:

This is some of what children are being told to sing in public schools.

Song 1:
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

I mean, as a child I was taught to sing, “red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight.”  We were singing about Jesus, the Messiah.  The Son of God.  Now children who could NEVER be taught to sing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” are being brainwashed to sing praise hymns to Barack Obama.

Song 2:
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say “hooray!”

Hooray, Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans
To make this country’s economy number one again!

Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue!

So continue —- Mr. President we know you’ll do the trick
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray —-

Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!

This song was sung to the melody of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Same song, just with the words changed.  These were the old words (the rest of the song is here), before Obama’s people blasphemed it:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

These songs were sung by the children in “honor” of black history month.  Government union teachers today are more than capable of using ANYTHING to indoctrinate their students into radical leftist politics and flat-out Obama worship.

Another effort by the radical leftwing and George Soros-supported Tides Foundation has received wide viewing from children in public schools.  It is blatant ideological leftism.  Capitalism=bad and socialism=good.

A few words on that:

There is a video called the Story of Stuf, that is being showed in schools across the country.You can watch it here.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8&feature=player_embedded.  The problem with this video, is that it was paid for by the George Soros funded Tides Foundation and the Host Annie Leonard is a former Green Peace employee and has worked on several environmental issues.  The problem with the video is that it is filled with lies and misrepresentations of the facts.

Here is a four part video that debunks the Story of Stuff, and many of its outrageous claims. SOS Critique 1, SOS Critique 2, SOS Critique 3, SOS Critique 4.  Please watch all 4.

There was another video project called “I pledge” that sought to link “positive change” with the person of Barack Obama shown in public schools.

During the campaign public school teachers were certainly out to brainwash kids under their care.

It’s not just pro-left and pro-Obama indoctrination.  Children are being taught to hate conservatives and Republicans.

And we have kids reminding us that Hitler’s Brownshirts are never far away:

This isn’t just frightening.  It is a moral outrage.

Anyone on the left who wants to try to sell the message that our schools aren’t bastions of liberal political activism are just wrong.  Not to mention evil.

Debunking The Story of Stuff

Glenn Beck: September 22, 2009

Indoctrination? Actually, the progressives are starting much younger these days…there is a video being played in schools all across America — that lays out the ’story of stuff’ a loving, anti-capitalist tale that unfortunately has virtually no facts correct. Visit THIS site to watch the video (if you can stomach the entire thing) — when you are done, check out this thorough debunking of the video, in which the commentator investigates the footnotes used in the ’story of stuff’ video.

Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 1 of 4

Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 2 of 4

Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 3 of 4

Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 4 of 4

Be sure to note “who” has paid for this video that is being shown in the schools now. By the way, this perception is NOT the perception of a capitalistic society that groups like Junior Achievement present when they volunteer in the classrooms.

Your kids are though. Prepare yourself if you press the play button.

This disgusting video gets more ridiculous every second that goes by. I could go through and destroy every claim she makes. Maybe we’ll do that on the show one day, it’ll take a while, but it’ll be worth it. This is absolute trash. (6:40-7:34, and 9:00-10:10 are the most absurd parts of the whole video).

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s CEO, Lynn Harsh, will be on Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News Channel at 5 p.m.

The topic of the interview will focus on The Story of Stuff, an animated piece by Annie Leonard that trashes the free-market system in favor of a more socialistic, communistic system. The cartoon is specifically aimed at children.

Now, I’m watching this as I type, and so far it’s proving quite…interesting.

Read more at West Virginia Watchdog

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Yesterday I finally got around to watching “The Story of Stuff.” Even at its totally ADHD-digestible 20 minutes, I hadn’t made it a priority because some part of me kept thinking, “I already know that.” But Annie Leonard’s disarmingly simple presentation hits home the message that our linear, unsustainable relationship with Stuff is coming apart, for better and for worse, and that we have a fundamental opportunity right now to redefine that relationship, close loops, create sustainable cycles, and change the way we do business. If we don’t, the results will cause (and to some extent already are causing) cultural indigestion and crises of gargantuan proportions in the health of human society. Alarmist? It only sounds alarmist to anyone who’s addicted to the functioning of the linear model of Stuff and who, like an ostrich, pretends not to see what comes out the back end.

Click here to watch The Story of Stuff, and please leave a comment with your thoughts and impressions.

Ahora que estamos en la semana del Fair Play, y que el tema se puso en la mesa en BDSF, aquí un video que probablemente muchos hayan visto ya. Para los que no, valen la pena los minutos invertidos aquí, y para los que sí, una refrescadita de memoria no le hace mal a nadie.

¿Dejar de comprar? ¿Dejar de desperdiciar? ¿Estamos dispuestos a sacrificarnos para el bien común?

¿Qué dices tú?

Before dinner the other night, I picked a napkin out of the napkin holder, ripped it in half, saved one part for myself and gave the other to my mom.

My mom, who uses compost coffee grinds in her garden and saves old cereal boxes to package leftovers, rolled her eyes. I was taking my “no-waste” kick too far.

Or was I?

(I should add that these were ridiculously large napkins.)

I’ve been astounded lately by the amount of paper and packaging around me, and somewhat repulsed by the amount of unnecessary waste that gets used and thrown away each day.

When I returned from Argentina, I took a trip to Costco and nearly threw a fit as I stood amidst floor-to-ceiling aisles of goods wrapped and rewrapped in miles of plastic and cardboard.  As I stared, paralyzed, down the seemingly endless bread aisle, I wondered When did plastics start to give me the heebie jeebies? When did I start getting nervous around any product that isn’t reusable?

(The sheer multitude of bread choices only exacerbated my plastics anxiety. Would my family prefer Honey Wheat and Oat, All Natural Whole Grain, Original Oatnut, Original Multigrain, Multigrain Plus, Healthy Eight Grain, Whole Grain Whole Wheat or Split Top Whole Wheat? And why is everything double-bagged? I grabbed a white loaf and ran.)

Josh mentioned this in an earlier post: The economic crisis hit at the same time people really started thinking about living green. Or perhaps people really started thinking about living green because of the economic crisis. Somehow, the two are intertwined. People are changing their consumption habits, not because it’s trendy or crunchy, but because it makes more economic sense.

In the past, we could buy, throw away, and then buy again, emptying our wallets and filling our landfills. But a new economic reality has caused U.S. citizens to examine their purchases and their habits more carefully.  It now makes more sense, monetarily speaking, to dry your clothes in the sun, turn off the air conditioning, using less toilet paper, drive less often, buy fewer clothing items and purchase more durable goods.

Coincidentally, these habits are also good for the environment

(According to this article, we each use 60 pounds of tissue paper a year. Germans use 33 pounds a year. Are we dirtier or just more wasteful?).

Perhaps the upshot to the economic crisis is that it will serve as a painful hangover in the morning-after stage of the “frat years” of U.S. consumption. It will force us to stop seeing the green movement as a cause for liberal granola-eating elitists, and to start changing our habits out of pure necessity.  Going green — or light green — doesn’t mean we eschew all plastics, live in tents and wear burlap sacks. It simply means that we are aware of the ecological and economic impact of our lifestyles.

For me, it’s also a realization that the products I use are created somewhere else in the world, by other people (perhaps in South America, where I just came from!) and that my life impacts their lives. But that’s a discussion for another post.

If you want to think more about environmental sustainability and its connection to our consumer habits, watch this life-changing video: Story of Stuff. I also recommend “Usélo y Tírelo” a short book by Eduardo Galeano (yet to be published in English, I’m sorry!).

Question: Have you changed your day-to-day consumption habits in light of the crisis?

Julie.

Steel pots, faux-tribal rugs, sleek trendy computers, hormonal chicken…  I both want and despise these things.   I feel somehow
improved by them and degraded by them.  I feel compelled to acquire more and to give away everything I own and prostrate myself before those distant peoples who made them for me at a ridiculously low price. I’m not going to recount the sad story of stuff here, but I would like to my register my low-grade agitation over the daily stuff in my life.

BUT WHAT DO I DO?  I need my steel pot.  I eat soup!

The artist Elise Engler decided, brilliantly, to make an inventory-like series of drawings of everything she owned.  She gives
individual, focused attention to each item, no matter how abused and  neglected (toilet paper?). Attention is somehow central to the whole issue of stuff and stuffness. Attention given by the maker and attention conferred by the user.

Above is a picture of a thing we acquired in the last year. It’s a memento from B.’s parents’ house, which was recently sold: a cardboard game called CLASS STRUGGLE.  (In two dimensions, it’s a very dull game.)  It sits around our house offering us occasional metaphors and symbolisms and generally being very kitschy.  But it’s basically ignored.  Neglected.

I’m sorry CLASS STRUGGLE.  I’ve subdued and buried you.  And I didn’t even mean to.