The story of stuff as narrated by Annie Leonard is an eye opener for every single human being living on this planet. Essentially there is food for thought for every one of us. The story is clearly not blown out of proportion; in fact it only explains us how grave the situation is.
There is no denying of the fact that in a bid to make tons and thousands of consumers stuff we are actually depleting the natural resources (trees, water, oil, minerals etc) at an extremely brisk pace. Not only are we eating up the natural resources, we are also polluting the environment .The developed countries lead by the United States are consuming bulk of the world’s natural resources. These countries are also the leaders when it comes to contaminating the environment with toxics. The products that we are producing are also toxic and it really is TOXIC IN AND TOXIC OUT as far as our manufacturing plants are concerned. The most glaring part of the story is that human breast milk which epitomizes purity is also contaminated by toxic which means the entire food chain is contaminated.
We have progressed; but at the expense of clean air, clean drinking water, forests, mineral resources and mostly importantly our moral values. We are really not living in an era of intellectuals or philosophers; instead we are living in an era of consumption. The world’s leading economies are focusing on how to keep the consumer goods rolling in the market. It is so cruel that in some parts of the world we are focusing on luxuries and in most underdeveloped countries people do not even have basic necessities of life. We seem to be embroiled in this economic war and in the process getting our priorities wrong.
Designers surely design the products very smartly these days. The modern gadgets which include our laptops, I-Phones etc become obsolete within six months as the new ones have new and better features. We somehow consider it our moral obligation to buy these latest devices every six months in order to keep up with the flow of time. It is horrendous but true, our field of vision is only confined to BUYING MORE AND MORE STUFF and we are oblivious to the different stages the stuff goes through before it comes in to malls. Our ignorance is our loss as more consumption also means more pollution and more anomalous changes in the eco system.
It is high time that leading powers of the world understand the gravity of the situation. The current manufacturing, processing and dumping system needs a massive revamp. It’s about time we acted for the better future of our generations.