Nicole - The Story of Stuff

The following 20 minute video is faced paced but interesting to listen to:

The presenter is a lady who has become passionate about her subject and the more I learn about Green Design the more I think I could develop a passion for it too.  What's good about this video is that it's informative but easy to understand and digest.  She sums it up early on by pointing out that the materials economy is a linear system and we cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely.  We are running out of resources fast, especially in the USA who use a much larger percentage of resources compared to the population percentage.  


We need to change our throw away mindset and change the system to one which isn't going to destroy our way of life and our world.


Shocking facts include:

• 75% of the global fisheries are fished at or beyond their capacity.
• 80% of the world's original forests are gone.
• In the Amazon alone we are loosing 2000 trees a minutes - that's equivalent to seven football pitches a minute.
• Over 100,000 synthetic chemicals are used in commerce today.
• Only a handful of those have been tested for health impacts and none have been tested for synergistic health impacts (how they react with other chemicals).
• If we put toxins into production we will get toxins out into our lives.
• Breast milk is the most contaminated food in the food chain.
• The US releases over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals a year.
• 99% of the goods we buy are in the bin within six months of purchasing them.
• The average american consumes twice as much as they did 20 years ago.
• Planned obsolescence is now part of the manufacturing process - in other words the manufacturers design goods to stop working within a set period of time - so that we have to keep buying 'stuff'.
• Perceived obsolescence works by manufacturers changing the appearance of things so that it is obvious what is new and what is not - we then feel the need to update ' stuff'.
• People in the US are targeted with over 3000 adverts a day.
• Polls show that happiness is declining.  It peaked in 1950 - about the time that the consumption mania exploded.  We have less leisure time and that time is then spent on watching TV and shopping which is not really making us happy.
• Each american makes 4.5 lbs of rubbish a day (double what they made 30 years ago).
• Rubbish either gets dumped in landfill or burned and then dumped in landfill.  Both of which pollute the air, water and land.

Scary hey?

END