It could be said that America is obsessed with having things. We are one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, and that is the by-product of our need to own things. It’s such a powerful need, in fact, that we’ve got other countries making things for us; it’s not a local phenomenon. But for all of our focus on procurement, we spend very little time thinking about where all of these things go when we’ve lost our use for them and throw them away.
This issue is the subject of a successful viral video made by Annie Leonard entitled “The Story of Stuff”, a 21-minute long look at the chain of events that brings things into our homes, from extraction, to production, to distribution, to consumption, to disposal. The video was so successful, in fact, that it spawned a new book of the same name, in which the author details her journey of learning about how this process works, and what it’s done to the world we inhabit.
Most of us don’t consider trash after it’s been taken away by the garbage men, and because we don’t, our children won’t either. It’s up to us to take the time to learn more about the Materials Economy, how it affects our environment, and to teach that to our kids. They’re going to inherit what we’ve left behind, and they’re the ones upon whom it will fall to invent new ways to manage their world. This is not a problem that’s going to just vanish. Let’s figure it out while we still have time.
