Summary Of The Video Story Of Stuff

In the video Story of Stuff is it explains the movement of goods in a “Materials Economy”. This cycle is broken down into 5 steps in the cycle resources, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. Today, we are using roughly about 1/3 of the resources available to us. This use of resources has resulted in less 4% of forest left, 40% undrinkable water that is a great use. The US is 5% of the world’s population and we use 30% of its resources.
Production contributes to 4 billion pounds of pollution in a year. There are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals that go into producing products. Babies get the highest amount of toxins in their bodies just by being breastfed from their mothers.
Distribution of these toxic materials are made to sale quickly and to keep consumers buying. All of this contributes to lower work safety and health.

As consumers we discard 99% of all items that we purchase within a 6 month period. We are made to believe 2 ideas, planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is when a manufacturer of a product knowingly and purposely creates a product that will break or need to be thrown out sooner than later. Perceived obsolescence is when a product is in good working condition but we feel that we need to discard it and get a new one. We are tricked into thinking that the products in our possession are no longer living up to the way society think we should look. This is achieved by changing the look of a product slightly, to how many television ads that are aired on television telling us that we need this or we need