With this week’s double-header 50 Ways to Reduce Your Waste Line, we complete the fourth (of five) tiers of progressively deeper green suggestions on each of ten topics.
Under the topic of “knowing”, this time it is a different type of action suggestion: watch the mini-documentary The Story of Stuff.
Originally released in December 2007, it is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the Stuff in your life forever.
What Can You Do to Reduce Your Waste Line?
If you’re still waffling over how worthwhile that 20 minutes of your life will be spent watching The Story of Stuff, here are some incentive facts:
- In the past three decades (yup, just 30 years) a full one-third of the planet’s natural resources base have been consumed.
- On average, each person makes 4½ pounds of garbage a day*, which is twice what we each made thirty years ago.
- We each see more advertisements in one year than a people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime.
- Revenues of the rental storage industry (i.e., self-storage units) exceeds that of the motion picture industry*.
*U.S. data, but no reason to believe it would be significantly different in Canada.
The Story of Stuff Project’s journey began with a 20-minute online movie about the way we make, use and throw away all the items and products in our lives. Five years and 40 million views later, the movie has evolved into a movement.
If you feel strongly about what you learn, share it with others whether individually or in groups at meetings and meet-ups. It is sure to stimulate discussion—and hopefully some action too!
