The story of stuff - summarized for your convenience

Earlier today I posted a great little 20-minute movie called The Story of Stuff. But I've been informed by someone who knows a lot more about this than I do, my brilliant knows-all-about-computers-and-the-people-who-use-them boyfriend, that this video is too long for the attention span of the average internet-surfer. Therefore, I decided to reduce it to a small summary and highlight some of the mindblowing facts that are mentioned in it. I still recommend you go see it though, because it is just so fascinating (to me, at least).

• Annie Leonard, who presents The Story of Stuff, spend 10 years traveling the world to research and track where our stuff comes from and where it goes.
• In the past 3 decades, 1/3 of the earth's natural resources have been consumed.
• 80 % of the planet's original forests are gone.
• The Amazon is losing 2.000 trees a minute.
• During the production of stuff, chemicals are added to the resources that have been extracted from the earth (for example: wood). There are 100.000 synthetic chemicals. Only a few have been tested for the impact they have on us. None have been tested for the impact they have on us once they had a change to interact with eachother.
• BFRs (brominated flame retardants) are neuro-toxins, which means they are toxic to the brain. These chemicals are used on all types of products, including matresses and pillows.
• The food with the highest level of toxic contamination is human breastmilk.
• 1 % of all materials is still in use 6 months after the date of sale. The other 99 % is trashed (in the US).
• Planned obsolescence - "designed for the dump": All kinds of stuff is designed to break after a while (not too quickly, so you don't loose faith in the product, but soon enough) so you buy more.
• Perceived obsolescence: The way things look is changed all the time (clothing, shoes, computers etc.) so you keep buying new stuff, because you don't want to look old-fashioned.
• National happiness (in the US) peeked in the 1950's and has been declining ever since. The 1950's was also the time that the consumption mania exploded.
• Dioxin is the most toxic man-made chemical that exists. The number 1 source of this chemical is the incineration of garbage (thus, the most toxic chemical ever is being blown into the air for us to breath in).
• For every garbage can that leaves our home, 70 garbage cans of waste was created to produce the stuff that ends up in that 1 garbage can.
• A lot of stuff is too toxic to be recycled or just cannot be recycled (since it consist of too many different materials that cannot be separated).

PS: This afternoon, I found a blog called The Zero Waste Home of an American family that strives to create zero waste (by refusing, reducing, reusing and, as a final resort, recycling). Very fascinating!

The story of stuff

Everyone should see this little film called 'The story of stuff'! I came across it on the website The Kind Life. It looks and sounds a bit like it was made for small children (and perhaps it was), but it is filled with a ton of mindblowing facts and insanely interesting information about where our stuff comes from, the highly consumeristic world that we live in and the effects that this modern way of living has on the environment and ourselves. Check it out... today! And start thinking of (small) ways that you can reduce, reuse and recycle your stuff.

Less = more

Why I don't eat meat... a lot.

I guess my way of eating is not easily labeled. I'm not a vegetarian, because I eat, and don't have a problem with eating, fish. And I'm definitively not vegan, since I absolutely love (almost) all things dairy and cheese. But I don't eat a lot of meat. I've consiously made the decision to eat less meat after learning more about the modern meat industry and the effects that it has on the environment, ourselves and (perhaps most surprisingly to me) world hunger.

"Earth's 6,8 billion residents produce enough food to feed between 9 and 11 billion, yet 1 billion go hungry."
-- Joel Cohen, mathematical biologist - BigThink.com

So, we produce more than enough food to feed all the people on the planet, but there are still people starving. How can this be? This is, in part, because about 2/3 of the food (mostly grain) is being fed to animals in the meat industry. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce only 1 pound of edible meat. How illogical!

"Meat consumption is an ineffecient use of grain - the grain is used more efficiently when consumed directly by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat-eaters and the world's poor."
-- The Worldwatch Institute

Here in The Netherlands, about 60% of our grain is being fed to animals. Even worse, developing countries are also growing grain which is exported to Western countries where it is used to feed livestock. This is financially more benificial than using it to feed their own people (Vegetariërs.nl). Not only does the meat industry use a whole lot of grain, it also takes up huge amounts of other resources, such as water, land and energy.

"It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. You save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you do by not showering for six months! A totally vegan diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a typical meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day."

-- PETA

A lot of land is needed to not only house the animals, but also to grow the grain that is used to feed them. This leads to deforestation, which in turn leads to other environmental problems (such as the extinction of species and an increase in the amount of CO2 in the air).

And energy... the meat industry is a gigantic consumer of lots and lots of energy. It takes a 100 times more energy to produce 1 kilogram of meat than it does to produce 1 kilogram of potatoes. - Vegetariërs.nl

Furthermore, the meat industry is a major contributor to global warming and pollution. Worldwide, 18% of greenhouse gases ('broeikasgassen') can be contributed to the production of meat. This is 5% more than that of all types of transportation - cars, trains, boots and planes - combined! - Vegetariërs.nl

 The best known greenhouse gas is CO2, but the meat industry also exposes us to other greenhouse gases, most notably methaan (which is 21 times stronger than CO2!) due to the massive amounts of manure that the animals produce. - Vegetariërs.nl

"Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars."
-- United Nations

So, the modern meat industry is clearly not all that good for the environment. But the eating of meat isn't really all that good for ourselves either. It has been scientifically proven that eating lots of meat is unhealthy and that vegetarians generally suffer less from heart- and cardiovascular diseases and usually have less problems with obesity and diabetes (Vegetariërs.nl and ChooseVeg.com). It has also recently been in the news that (Dutch) scientists have now been able to proof definitively that eating meat (meanly chicken) can make your body resistent against antibiotics. This has to do with the antibiotics that are given to the animals that is still in their meat once you eat is.

After learning all this, and more, I decided to eat less meat. A whole lot less. Which for me, wasn't really all that much of a sacrifice, because I wasn't the biggest fan of meat in the first place. I do eat meat occasionally when I feel like it, and because I'm not necessarily against the slaughter of animals, I don't feel guilty when I do. Therefore, I'm also not saying that everyone should become a vegetarian, but just eating a little bit less meat would make such a great difference. It would be better for the environment, for yourself and it could make a small difference in the fight against world hunger. This is definitely a case where less = more! By eating less meat (and still eating delicious meals) you give other people, who desperately need it, a chance to have more food.