The Story of Stuff

I recently found, via DailyKos, a 20-minute video and accompanying website, The Story of Stuff, that provides an refreshingly pertinant voice in the discussion about consumerism, sustainability, and the environment. The presentation is of course rather simplified, and in some cases–such as when explaining what changes in new models of computer–it is oversimplified to the point of giving defensive nitpickers plenty of ways to discredit the piece. But the overall story that’s told is spot-on, and the simplifications are unavoidable if you’re trying to compress the story of the entire journey of everything we consume, from resource extraction to disposal, and its consequences, into a short video presentation. And any inaccuracies are very tiny when compared to the mis-representation one receives daily from advertising and mass media and the other side of the consumption debate.

It was slightly ironic, then, that the video couldn’t really run well on my 7-year old G4 Cube, so instead I watched it on my year-old Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro that I have home from work.

The Story of Stuff presents a viewpoint that I wish were more common in, say, Sierra Club Radio, which more often than not is more focused on finding “green” stuff to buy, instead of rethinking our relationship with stuff. (To say nothing of Consumer Reports, about which I hope to write more later.)

Watching The Story of Stuff, two parallel “readings” come to mind.

The first is a recent Washington Post story on the debate about the CSPC’s position on the use of Brominated Flame Retardant chemicals in furniture–the same BFRs that are highlighted in The Story of Stuff. With growing evidence that BFRs are, in fact, toxic, the debate on the surface looks like it could be about balancing the long-term risks of exposure to BFRs with the benefit of reduced risk of fatal fires. But that’s not what the debate was about. A leading cause of fires in homes is cigarettes igniting upholstered furniture. The cigarette industry wanted to avoid a mandate for self-extinguishing cigarettes, and looked to push the fire-safety problem onto the furniture makers. They bought off the fire marshals (who, it should be pointed out, are in no position whatsoever to evaluate the health risks of exposure to BFRs) and were assisted by the BFR manufacturers. The furniture industry put up a huge fight, and has mostly won, but the struggle continues. Completely on the sidelines are anyone looking out for the best interests of ordinary citizens.

The second piece is a segment on This American Life about textile workers in Cambodia. No, this is not a sweatshop horror story–Cambodia, apparently, has developed a textile industry the right way. Labor laws–which, by and large, are enforced–are modeled after French laws, and working conditions are generally good and wages considered fair. One gets the impression that Cambodian garment workers really do consider factory work to be a substantial step up from subsistence farming, the livelihood of roughly 70% of the country: industrialization is more complex than being forced to leave an degraded environment that once sustained people for generations. But more than that, the degree to which Americans buy new Cambodian-made clothes makes a huge difference in the quality of life of the garment workers, and the people who sell food or slippers or whatnot to the garment workers. It’s a reminder that “the economy” is not entirely about faceless corporations and the wealthy robber-barons who run them, but sometimes resembles the system that textbooks describe.