Annotated Script for the Story of Stuff
Story Of Stuff, Referenced and Annotated Script By Annie Leonard
Do you have one of these? I got a little obsessed with mine, in fact I got a little obsessed with all my stuff. Have you ever wondered where all the stuff we buy comes from and where it goes when we throw it out.? I couldn’t stop wondering about that. So I looked it up. And what the text books said is that our stuff simply moves along these stages: extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal. All together, it’s called the materials economy. Well, I looked into it a little bit more. In fact, I spent 10 years traveling the world tracking where our stuff comes from and where it goes.1 And you know what I found out? That is not the whole story. There’s a lot missing from this explanation. For one thing, this system looks like it’s fine. No problem. But the truth is it’s a system in crisis. And the reason it is in crisis is that it is a linear system and we live on a finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely.2 Every step along the way, this system is interacting with the real world. In real life it’s not happening on a blank white page. It’s interacting with societies, cultures, economies, the environment. And all along the way, it’s bumping up against limits. Limits we don’t see here because the diagram is incomplete. So let’s go back through, let’s fill in some of the blanks and see what’s missing. Well, one of the most important things that is missing is people. Yes, people. People live and work all along this system. And some people in this system matter a little more than others; some have a little more say. Who are they? Well, let’s start with the government. Now my friends3 tell me I should use a tank to symbolize the government and that’s true in many countries and increasingly in our own, afterall more than 50% of our federal tax money is now going to the military4, but I’m using a person to symbolize the government because I hold
Do you have one of these? I got a little obsessed with mine, in fact I got a little obsessed with all my stuff. Have you ever wondered where all the stuff we buy comes from and where it goes when we throw it out.? I couldn’t stop wondering about that. So I looked it up. And what the text books said is that our stuff simply moves along these stages: extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal. All together, it’s called the materials economy. Well, I looked into it a little bit more. In fact, I spent 10 years traveling the world tracking where our stuff comes from and where it goes.1 And you know what I found out? That is not the whole story. There’s a lot missing from this explanation. For one thing, this system looks like it’s fine. No problem. But the truth is it’s a system in crisis. And the reason it is in crisis is that it is a linear system and we live on a finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely.2 Every step along the way, this system is interacting with the real world. In real life it’s not happening on a blank white page. It’s interacting with societies, cultures, economies, the environment. And all along the way, it’s bumping up against limits. Limits we don’t see here because the diagram is incomplete. So let’s go back through, let’s fill in some of the blanks and see what’s missing. Well, one of the most important things that is missing is people. Yes, people. People live and work all along this system. And some people in this system matter a little more than others; some have a little more say. Who are they? Well, let’s start with the government. Now my friends3 tell me I should use a tank to symbolize the government and that’s true in many countries and increasingly in our own, afterall more than 50% of our federal tax money is now going to the military4, but I’m using a person to symbolize the government because I hold