The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [1]
THE STORY OF STUFF
HOW OUR OBSESSION WITH STUFF
IS TRASHING THE PLANET,
OUR COMMUNITIES, AND OUR HEALTH
—AND A VISION FOR CHANGE
Annie Leonard
with Ariane Conrad
Free Press
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2010 by Annie Leonard
Illustrations by Ruben DeLuna and Louis Fox, Free Range Studios
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
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First Free Press hardcover edition March 2010
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Designed by Chris Brunell, Free Range Studios
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leonard, Annie.
The story of stuff: how our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health—and a vision for change/Annie Leonard with Ariane Conrad.
p. cm.
1. Material culture. 2. Personal belongings. 3. Acquisitiveness—Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Consumerism (Economics)—Moral and ethical aspects.
I. Conrad, Ariane. II. Title.
GN406.L46 2010
306.4—dc22 2009042207
ISBN 978–1–4391–2566–3
ISBN 978–1–4391–4878–5 (e-book)
To Bobbie and Dewi
CONTENTS
Introduction
A Word About Words
Key to Recurring Graphics
Chapter 1: Extraction
Chapter 2: Production
Chapter 3: Distribution
Chapter 4: Consumption
Chapter 5: Disposal
Epilogue: Writing the New Story
Appendix 1: Examples of Promising Policies, Reforms, and Laws
Appendix 2: Recommended Individual Actions
Appendix 3: Sample Letter to PVC Retailers, Manufacturers, and Lobbyists
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
How We Made This Book
Index
About the Authors
INTRODUCTION
Growing up in the green and luscious city of Seattle during the 1970s was idyllic, but the real joy came in the summertime, when my family and I piled our camping gear into our station wagon and headed for the stunning North Cascades mountains. Since this was in the days before DVD players in the backseats, during the drive I’d look out the window and study the landscape. Each year I noticed that the mini-malls and houses reached a bit farther, while the forests started a bit later and got a bit smaller. Where were my beloved forests going?
I found my answer to that question some years later in New York City, of all places. The Barnard College campus where I went for my environmental studies classes was on West 116th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and my dorm room was on West 110th Street. Every morning I groggily trudged up those six blocks, staring at the mounds of garbage that line New York City’s streets at dawn each day. Ten hours later, I walked back to my dorm along the emptied sidewalks. I was intrigued. I started poking around to see what was in those never-ending piles of trash. Guess what? It was mostly paper.
Paper! That’s where my trees were ending up. (In fact, about 40 percent of municipal garbage in the United States is paper products.1) From the forests I knew in the Pacific Northwest to the sidewalks of the Upper West Side to... where?
My curiosity was sparked. I couldn’t stop there; I needed to find out what happened after the paper disappeared from the curb. So I took a trip to the infamous Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Covering 4.6 square miles, Fresh Kills was one of the largest dumps in the world. When it was officially closed in 2001, some say the stinking mound was the largest man-made structure on the planet, its volume greater than