the story of stuff

I can't remember if I introduced Lucy when she was added to my blogroll, but she is a nice person with big ideas.

Lucy is one of the people I know who takes her social action seriously. Her blog is often thought provoking and awash with ideas to help change the world, or at least our bit of it.

In a recent post she recommended her readers to look at the Story of Stuff, a 20 minute video about the environmental and social issues of the West's (particularly) production and consumption patterns.

I have been musing on such matters recently so decided to watch it. It sparked a few emotions in me during the 20 minute train and bus ride on the way to work.

In the opening scene, the presenter asks if the viewer has an iPod. Yes, I do. In fact I was watching the film on it. As the film went on, talking about production, consumption, disposal, recycling and other issues, my views were changed. I have an iPod, which is fairly new. My old one stopped working properly so I got rid of it, but I didn't bin it. For those not au fait with technology, iPods are "non-user serviceable", which basically means that the end user can't fix it themselves. This also means that it is nigh on impossible to recycle them once they reach the end of their life span. I gave my iPod to a friend whose own iPod battery broke. Despite it only being a battery fault, she had to throw her iPod away. I guess that only throwing one iPod in the bin is better than throwing two, but it's still not great.

About half way through the film, I was starting to feel bad. I could identify with pretty much all of what was being said and was guilty of most of it. The presenter then made a statement that stuck out. She said that Europeans weren't as bad as Americans at the whole production cycle (which is linear not cyclical!)

That pleased me, until I realised that actually us Brits aren't "proper" Europeans. Having said that we aren't American either, but we don't embrace the rubbish sorting and the likes as well as the Germans or French for example.

By the end of the film, I was sufficiently annoyed at the world's apathy towards recycling that I came home and sorted a bit of our flat's rubbish into plastics, paper, cans and unrecyclable stuff.

Visit the website which gives various options for watching the film and take heed.

P.S. Prepare to be annoyed, lovers of English, as the presenter uses the word "toxics" as a noun. She should use "toxins" but doesn't. Maybe it was intentional to annoy people into action or maybe she just thinks it's the right word

Timmy "Trying not to Stuff up the planet" Magic