Annie Leonard, best known for the creation of an animated documentary about the life cycle of Stuff and entitled “The Story of Stuff”, explains in a namesake book the polluting process through which the Stuff is created and eventually dismissed. Her message is clear: we not only have too much Stuff (she prefers not using the word goods, “since goods are so often anything but good”), we also do not use it properly.
Annie Leonard is an American environmental activist whose greatest aim is the struggle against excessive consumerism, which afflicts western societies. Her attention, however, is mainly focused on American society. Since 1988 she has worked with Greenpeace, when she set up a campaign to stop international waste dumping and started …show more content…
I am going to review the book from my personal perspective, that is the perspective e of someone who is interested in the topic but is not an expert of environmental issues.
The book did a good job showing the hidden downsides of the five different stages of a product’s life, by providing concrete examples, data, and personal experiences of the author. It exposes information that most people (including myself) would not think of when they buy a product or dispose of it. On buying cheap stuff, for example, the great majority of people do not think about the external costs that weight on health conditions of people living in the third world, because what they concretely see is just the final material product itself. Meanwhile, the production process is hidden and usually happened far away from our eyes, deceiving us to believe that everything is being carried out according to the right criteria. Who would ever believe, for instance, that the most romantic act of proposing to a girl and give her the diamond ring she always dream of, it conceals in reality the many dangers and risks that miners have to face (according to statistics, mining is one of the most dangerous jobs and it claims thousands of death and injured every year), in order to extract that precious stone? Not to mention the huge environmental damages that open air mines cause, by ruining and horribly polluting the
Annie Leonard is an American environmental activist whose greatest aim is the struggle against excessive consumerism, which afflicts western societies. Her attention, however, is mainly focused on American society. Since 1988 she has worked with Greenpeace, when she set up a campaign to stop international waste dumping and started …show more content…
I am going to review the book from my personal perspective, that is the perspective e of someone who is interested in the topic but is not an expert of environmental issues.
The book did a good job showing the hidden downsides of the five different stages of a product’s life, by providing concrete examples, data, and personal experiences of the author. It exposes information that most people (including myself) would not think of when they buy a product or dispose of it. On buying cheap stuff, for example, the great majority of people do not think about the external costs that weight on health conditions of people living in the third world, because what they concretely see is just the final material product itself. Meanwhile, the production process is hidden and usually happened far away from our eyes, deceiving us to believe that everything is being carried out according to the right criteria. Who would ever believe, for instance, that the most romantic act of proposing to a girl and give her the diamond ring she always dream of, it conceals in reality the many dangers and risks that miners have to face (according to statistics, mining is one of the most dangerous jobs and it claims thousands of death and injured every year), in order to extract that precious stone? Not to mention the huge environmental damages that open air mines cause, by ruining and horribly polluting the