The Story of Stuff 2

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is about overconsumption on our planet and the effects it is having on the environment and our health. Leonard explores firsthand factories and communities around the world to find out intricate processes and stories of what’s behind simple products in our lives. One chapter explains how industries created a huge consumer class to keep up with the revolution of mass production. Leonard summarizes in two sections how industry did this: “Planned Obsolescence,” which describes how consumers are persuaded to buy many of the same item, and “Advertising,” which explains how companies use effective tricks to get people to buy from them. These “tricks” are surprising in that they are so present in our lives that we consider them normal.

Leonard describes how companies get people to buy products in great quantities. With a new load of products coming from factories, the industry needed a lot of consumers, so the architects of the system came up with a strategy called planned obsolescence, or “designed for the dump. ” She includes a quote from American industrial designer Brook Stevens, who popularized the term in the 1950s: “Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, and a little sooner than necessary.” That summarizes what the scheme is about, enticing people buy new things, faster. Leonard uses the example of our cell phones. “Today’s cell phones, for example, which have an average lifespan of only about a year, are pretty much never technologically obsolete when we throw them away and replace them with new ones.” People are constantly replacing their phones even though each new one is little better than the last one. To get people to do this the industry did several things. One, it made the cost of repairing products equal to or more expensive than buying new ones. Two, it made replacement parts and service very hard to get. Three, it made upgrades and accessories that were incompatible with older models. Lastly, the look of products had to keep changing to “provide an incentive to toss the older model.” So by making repair a hassle and new products look more desirable, the industry got consumption to a new level.

The book’s second section is called "Advertising." This is the second major reason the industry was able to expand its consumer class to keep pace with its mass-producing factories. Leonard starts by explaining just how many advertisements we see: “By the time she is twenty, the average American has been exposed to nearly a million advertising messages.” Children can identify company logos before they even begin school. Clearly, advertising has always been in the background of our lives. At one time, advertisements expressed simple messages like “Just imported" or “Now in stock.” Today, advertising is on a whole new scale. It involves psychologists, neuroscientists, and actual consumers to find out ways to influence people. Modern ads make us feel bad about what we don't have, and push us to buy more. Brands use image to try to convince us, and often associate their product with a person, lifestyle, or social status. Tiger Woods is under contract from Nike, and his gear is never swoosh-less. To provide an example of what advertisements can do, Leonard writes of her daughter’s infatuation with the popular television character, Dora the Explorer: “Dora popped up everywhere¾on TV, toothbrushes, shampoo, backpacks, electronic games, pencil sets, underwear, bikes, sweatshirts, birthday party goodie bags, pillow cases, beach pails, ice cream, and even breakfast cereal.” Leonard says whenever her daughter sees Dora on a product she squeals, even if it’s something like toothpaste¾not something otherwise inviting for a pre-kindergartener. She writes that buying that toothpaste was like gaining a friend for her daughter. “Despite my best efforts, it’s been impossible to keep ads from influencing her,” Leonard explains. Clearly ads are very effective in getting people to purchase loads of stuff.

It is scary how well planned obsolescence and advertising has worked, and after reading that section I see what the industry does more clearly. I see gadget after gadget come out, like the iPhone and its many generations. I have witnessed clothing trends become old within weeks and have watched my family struggle to repair things, such as wristwatches, and end up replacing them. It is also frightening how many ads there are; Tiger Woods is basically a walking commercial. The book has really opened my eyes to everything that makes us buy more, and I’ll definitely pay more attention to the effects of the techniques used by companies on me.

Annie Leonard explains in depth how the consumer class expanded so much and she provides examples to help us see what she means. Anyone who reads her book will probably have the same reaction as I did¾shock at how effective industry’s plan was.

Review on Jefferson's Blog

Go to: Jeffersons Blog

I have read the post titled "Social Action: Inquiry Question #1" on Jefferson’s blog and have decided to praise his great work. In the post, Jefferson takes apart on old picture book called “Stone Soup” by Marcia Brown. Because I have also read the book, I understand what points Jefferson is making, while he’s also introduced me to aspects of social action that I have not noticed. Jefferson uses the few number of details to find and elaborate aspects of war and poverty. He explains well where he came up with these themes that my younger self could not of found and unlocked to me an entirely new and deeper side of the book.

“Stone Soup” is about three French soldiers coming back from war to a small town looking for food and shelter. After being refused, the soldiers make a pot of soup out of a single stone, but convince the people to help by adding an ingredient. Jefferson analyzed the beginning to bring out its reflection of poverty using very basic, picture book details. He states how the “the villagers are nice, gentle people.” But these people were on such the brink of starvation and poverty that they simply couldn’t afford to help out the soldiers. For a group of caring people, they must be at an extreme level of poor. Jefferson also uses basic details to bring out the issue of war and it’s effect on different people. He includes details from citizens and soldiers to show the how the book reflects these issues. He stated, “The beginning of the book explains how they [the soldiers] haven’t had anything to eat for two days. Also they had to march all the way home by themselves.” For regular people, he mentioned a quote from one of the books characters. “We gave all we could spare to soldiers who came before you,” said Albert, who had refused the soldiers food. Now we can clearly see that war probably has a very negative impact to different groups, and can lead to bad cases of poverty.

One last thing good about the post, was it was very straight forward, and there were no unclear or confusing parts. Not once did I have to stop and try to find out what the author was trying to say. Overall, Jefferson did a good job unpacking simple details and revealing the more complex theme of “Stone Soup.”

The Story of Stuff

A couple days ago, I started the book The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. It is mainly about the overconsumption of resources on our planet and its effect on places around the world. Throughout the piece the author also presents thoughts on solutions to these problems. In the beginning, she talks about our three most basic resources—trees, rocks, and water—and the ways they are overconsumed. Because Leonard is an environmentalist, she wants us to feel attached to trees, rocks, and water even though they are so plentiful around the world. For each one, she uses certain techniques to make us share her opinion that we need to work on saving our resources.

In her section about trees, Leonard shares her personal experience with forests in her childhood. To avoid confusing readers with the complicated issues of cutting down trees, she explains her appreciation of forests when she was a kid to show the most obvious reasons forests are worth saving. “One big reason I loved forests was the many animals that lived in them,” she writes. “Forests provide homes for about two-thirds of the species on earth.” She follows that with examples of examples of animals like parrots and monkeys. This connects us to trees because animals are very likeable and we would hate to see them disappear by deforestation. As a kid, I can relate to the author’s childhood as I also am an animal fan. Another thing the author does to connect us to trees is show the mind-boggling numbers on the rates at which our forests are being cut down. “Globally, we’ve been losing more than 7 hectares a year or 20,000 hectares—almost 50,000 acres—a day.” And to make it more reader-friendly, she provides a comparison to give us a picture on how many trees we are losing: “This is equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris each day, or about 33 football fields worth every minute.” Just thinking about how we lose a football field of trees every two seconds gives us a great understanding of the rapid loss of trees and is persuasive enough to make us strongly consider her opinion.

In the next section, to give a picture of the importance of water, Leonard compares water from a strong, healthy forest to the water from a clear-cut forest. The water from the intact forest was clear, healthy, and free of chemicals. The water from the clear-cut forest was the opposite: “The rivers below a clear-cut were cloudy, full of muck and debris, with fewer fish, bugs, and life of any kind.” Now that we know how much deforestation there is, we can imagine all of the rivers and water sources that are contaminated in those clear-cut areas. The author also connects the water in these forests to us. “The rivers in the North Cascades feed multiple watersheds from which Washington state’s population draws water for drinking, washing, and irrigation,” Leonard writes. “The health of those rivers impacts the health of bodies of water—as well as bodies of fish, birds, and people—hundreds of miles away.” Now that we have a connection to these rivers and animals, we naturally feel a little more concerned about our water.

In the section about rocks, Leonard does something different to sell us on her ideas. She takes a simple piece of jewelry—her small, gold ring—and explains its history. She starts by theorizing that the ring came from South Africa where a good portion of the world’s gold comes from. Then she presents a very surprising fact about the background of her ring. “Mining enough gold for just an average gold wedding ring creates about 20 tons of hazardous mining waste, which is dumped in rivers or the sea, or sometimes just left right where it was created, as I saw in South Africa.” By presenting this fact, she gets readers thinking about how much mining waste is produced for small pieces of gold jewelry, and how gold should rarely be purchased. This directly relates to her opinion that resources should be conserved. After that, the author explains the long and complicated process of extracting gold and all the various toxins, like cyanide, that are spread into the environment. By detailing all the damage that one gold ring can do, she gets the reader to agree that we should be making and buying less gold.

In conclusion, the author uses facts, comparisons, and personal experiences to prove her point that we need to conserve our trees, rocks, and water. For the rest of the book, I expect more references to those trees, rocks, and water that she wants so much to conserve. Just the beginning of this book has taught me a big issue in our world of which I was barely aware.