Story of Stuff Summary

The Story of Stuff

There is much to the cycle of things, besides made, consumed and recycled. As Annie Leonard mentioned in the video called “Story of Stuff” which was made in 2007, that the perceptions people usually have of things in their mind are linear system consisting of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. But the society is “Finite” which she called. She mentions that government and corporations are a part of the society, as well as people whether they work in factories, stores, consumers, and others. The 100 largest economies belong to government and corporations, with the ratio of 49:51 having corporations’ more than half of it. The corporations get better than government and the government seems like working for the corporations. The beginning of the cycle is ‘Extraction’ where natural resources take place. The thing is that the natural resource is limited and it is getting exhausted as much and as fast as we use it. Statistically, Annie showed 1/3 natural resources is gone, in USA less than 1% of the forest is left while 45% of the water is drinkable.

The left resources go the level of cycle, ‘Production’ making 2000 trees per minute gone, gathering toxics and producing more pollution to the world which they assume go to others’ area, but eventually comes back to them causing tons of diseases and illnesses. With the products that are made in ‘Production’, Distribution level connects the products with consumers by advertising about 3000 ads per day just to make you feel sad not having it which drives you to go and purchase it. That brings that ‘Consumption’ level where everyone buys the things they suppose they need but, it’s not that their needs, but their wants, desires that push them to buy more and more. Last but not least, ‘Disposal’ level comes in place where the products went to trash brought by consumers. Popular idea of product in many people’s mind is that the 99% of the products after purchased turn into...