Video Analysis: The Story Of Stuff By Annie Leonard And Jonah Sachs

Many Americans are influenced by the trends in advertisements and a big part of the problem is impulsivity. Americans experience a satisfying feeling when they shop. They are unmindful that low prices result from underlying costs unexposed by corporations. Businesses practice unsustainable production and through their influence, society neglects a developing environmental crisis.

The target audience is focused predominantly on the American population because of her frequent referral towards Americans as a whole. She uses the question, “why in the world did we buy all this junk in the first place?” as a means to draw the audience in (500). Short stories are supplied in order to support her claim of happiness not being derived from objects. She begins with a story of a holiday disaster, where an employee gets trampled to death by shoppers obsessed with getting the greatest deals. This story is used as an example of the most extreme materialism, and informs the audience of what can happen when materialism gets out of control. Quindlen provides several examples to back up her claims about American debt. For instance, she claims that debt from credit will reach a trillion dollars in the year 2010 (501). This claim supports her statement about how bad America’s addiction to consumption is. She goes on to provide several additional examples throughout her piece. Other than providing examples, Quindlen uses uncomplicated vocabulary and provides the reader structure within her article. Both good and bad aspects are provided in her piece of literature and in the end she does get her point

In a fascinating statement, Stenger says, engaged in a cumulative and ambitious race to modify and gain control of our environment, and in the process we have come close to domestication ourselves” (112). By controlling our natural environment, we control ourselves, and essentially we would become domesticator and the animal. Stenger is not alone in his belief that we become something different when to take away the wilderness, Annie Leonard comes to similar conclusion, even though she does not state it in the same way Stenger does. In her video “The Story of Stuff” Leonard outlines how humans have created a culture of consumerism. We want stuff, we need stuff, and stuff is our life. The only thing that makes life worthwhile, is acquiring stuff because it gives us status (Leonard). However, like Stegner says, this was of life that promotes the world we create over the wilderness, even at the cost of the wilderness does not make us happy. Leonard points out that our national happiness started declining right at the point when our society started becoming driven by consumerism. Destroying the environment, forgetting about the environment to focus on ourselves as the biggest and most important thing in the world

“Waste” is a short essay in which Wendell Berry critically analyzes the growing epidemic of trash that is polluting the nation’s land, waterways, and the air. Berry explains to the readers how the remnants of floods and litter that leave farmlands scattered with trash, makes more work for the farmers who have to rid their land of the trash before they can use it. Along with the floods, roads and highways also lead to a barrage of garbage from people who are too lazy or ignorant to take proper care of their garbage, which Berry claims leads to “. . . a constant precipitation of cans, bottles, the plastic-ware containers of fast food joints, soiled plastic diapers, and sometimes whole bags of garbage,” (Waste 1) along the edges of their fields. The garbage of the country continues to be a burden for everyone, whether it impacts them directly or not. Although it would be impossible to eliminate garbage completely from the country, the waste could be greatly reduced. Most of today’s trash is a consequence of the laziness of American society.

Producers are enablers. They encourage people to spend money on things they don’t need and aren’t necessities. Consumers are like drug addicts, they shop for things they don’t need and are constantly striving to acquire what they don’t have. “We Americans are beyond a simple, possessive materialism.” (Rose) Americans have developed a shopping problem. We buy things simply for the

The article “Waste Not” by Elizabeth Royte was published in March of 2016 in National Geographic Magazine. It depicts the wastefulness of the food industry and shows the path of food from field to consumers’ homes. During the article the story focuses on Tristram Stuart; a food utilizing activist and naturalist, who is gathering wasted food for a food conservation event for the public. Stuart visits many different farms and markets to receive food that is not desirable. Throughout the world nearly one third of food that is grown is thrown away or wasted due to consumer needs and wants. This means that because there is a need and want for good quality food products that not only meet food eatable standards but also

The Business Dictionary defines consumerism as the “continual expansion of one’s wants and needs for goods services” (2016). Despite consumerisms current negative connotation, according to Dictionary.com the term itself originated in the early 1940s with a more positive economic connotation on the basis that consumerism inspired growth (2016). This concept of continual desire for the “latest and greatest” first became popular in the 1920s. Americans were tired of the strict rationing of World War I and were ready to begin spending money again. As production rose in efficiency and capacity, thanks to improvements made during the war, there was plenty to be sold. “By the 1920s, America was a society in which many men and women could afford not merely the means of subsistence, but a considerable measure of additional, discretionary goods and services; a society in which people could buy items not just because of need but for pleasure as well” (Brinkley, 641). But, what affect did this have on the American population? How did this insatiable appetite for goods shift American ideals and values? Consumerism in the 1920s was viewed as a means to finding happiness, love, and companionship in life. Yet, history, media representation of time, and critical analyses repeatedly demonstrate that consumerism was an ineffective and troublesome means to satisfaction.

In fact, Americans are the most wasteful type of people– they buy unrecyclable bags and items, drive as much as the rest of the people in the world combined, and consume enough food to feed an extra 80 million in another part of the globe. Honestly speaking, the ones to blame aren’t them, but the selfish corporate companies who pump out tantalizing advertisements to sell their superfluous products. The words ‘new and improved’ are plastered onto ads, in bright bold letters, and have people burning holes in their wallets scrambling to buy them. Simply put, it’s an addiction. Once a better model with a slight modification is released, the old one is considered outdated and unwanted; the owners dumping them into the landfill once they’ve gotten the new model. Quindlen brings up the concept Veblen wrote about in his piece “The Theory Of The Leisure Class”, mentioning that “the buying habits of most Americans owed little to need and much to wanting . . . “ Which is evidently true; the amount of Americans who buy video game consoles to play nonstop for a week and then allow it to collect dust for the next 5 years are countless. Which brings up the concept called “keeping up with the Joneses”, reiterating the fact that companies create such manipulative advertisements to keep you wanting what you can’t have. The phrase

ou can only have so much good before it is all gone. Resource depletion is the biggest environmental issues known to man. As humans we’re using what we have to live, but we use more than we give out. Through science, we’re finally starting to understand that people are using too much of the resources and altering the face of the earth. If we’re not careful, these problems can’t be fixed.

In this essay I will be outlining consumerism and claims that a consumer society is always a throw-away society. Consumption plays a big part in our lives and causes us to live in divided societies. It may make us feel like we fit in buying new gadgets and clothes and also give us that sense of belonging but we don’t take into account what happens to the old items and packaging. People do not want to look at the problems caused. I will use this essay with the evidence I have read

We have come to a point where we have so many things we don’t know what to do with them. We forget about half of the items we own, we get a new phone, not because the old one is broken but just because the word old has been added to its name. It is becoming a vicious cycle of buying and spending money.

The need to feel a sense of belonging is a powerful and universal one. This sense is formed from connections made with others. The result can be a range of emotions, from an increase in the feeling of security and self esteem, to feelings of unhappiness and loneliness. When someone does not fit in, often because they are different, the negative emotions that they feel can be very harmful.

Is consumerism good? Anyone living in modern day society may think so. We can easily look around and witness all of the conveniences that consumerism grants us. Appliances help to alleviate our work load, electronics nullify any dull moments with instant entertainment, and the latest fashion trends of strictly the top brands allow us to be the envy of our peers. So, is consumerism good? That’s the central question addressed within the essays The Happiness Conspiracy, Needing the Unnecessary, and The Grill-Buying Guide.

All our stuff goes through a process in the materials economy: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. It sounds so simple but there are a lot of loopholes in between each step goes through.

Every year we replace light bulbs that died even though we just installed them last summer; Every October Americans rush to get the newest iphone even though their current one may be less than 2 years old. In 2010 the US threw away 141 million cellular devices, and only 11% were recycled (Benton, Coats, and Hazell 4). Our culture has become one of consumption and products today are even designed and built with that in mind. Companies have secret weapons at work constantly behind the scenes: planned and perceived obsolescence. Jeremy Bulow who wrote extensively on the economic theory of planned obsolescence defined planned obsolescence as “the production of goods with uneconomically short useful lives so that customers have to make repeat purchases” (1); In other word’s, the engineers designing products do so with the intent of the product to stop working within a set amount of time. Perceived obsolescence is just as sneaky, but completely psychological, it “convinces us to throw away stuff that is still perfectly useful” (Leonard 11). I believe that these practices are unacceptable and not sustainable indefinitely. They create a massive environmental impact secondary to increased waste (1), put financial strain on consumers (2), and impact the happiness of our society as a whole (3). As a society at large we need a paradigm shift in our view on production and consumption of goods.