A friend of mine sent me a link to a web site called The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. The site contains a 20-minute animated video describing the “consumer economy” and it’s effects on society and the planet. The bulk of the video is pencil-looking animation mixed with live shots of the host, Annie Leonard. Annie has spent more than 20 years investigating factories and dumps around the world. She has a lot of experience in international sustainability and environmental health issues. The video is both entertaining and troubling at the same time.

The Story of Stuff describes the product life cycle as: extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. As part of my experience as a contestant in the California Clean Tech Open, tried to better understand the environmental impacts of the product cycle. The main problem with the existing paradigm is that the process is linear and open-loop. Basically, we’re taking all the useful stuff from the planet and replacing it with harmful stuff. The goal of sustainability is to close the loop on the system through reuse and recycling as well as reducing the harmful side-effects along the way (like pollution and deforestation). As someone trying to start up a sustainable cleantech company, I am very concerned with ideas such as Design for Environment (DfE), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Cradle to Cradle (C2C).

Another major problem with the current paradigm is the sheer amount we consume. We in the US are especially driven to have all the latest and greatest stuff. We’re “good consumers.” We’ll even buy new stuff to replace perfectly good, though slightly out-dated, stuff. This is causing us to use up our resources even faster while creating more and more waste. Moderation and conservation are principles each of us needs to apply to our lives. “Good consumers” may be good for the economy, but we’re bad for the planet.

The video barely touches on the alternative, but the website provides some ides on how to make a difference in the section called Another Way and there’s a blog on The Story of Stuff for updated information. It’s a big problem and there’s no simple solution, but there are many ways we can get involved and make a difference. It’s about time we start. We only have one world to live in; we need to treat it with respect.