WRITER'S BLOCK
by Tim Wood 

Stuff

            With Hanukah, a birthday and Christmas all within a few weeks of each other, our house is overflowing with stuff.

            Not just gifts, though the gifts have been many.  But the stuff associated with stuff, like boxes, wrapping paper, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, gift receipts, plastic bags, twisty ties that secure toy trucks to their cardboard boxes, tiny screws that hold things in place, plastic tags, and other stuff for which I have no name or description.

            I’m certainly not averse to giving — or receiving — gifts, but in recent months, partly as a result of efforts to simplify our lives and home, I’ve become more conscious of just how much stuff surrounds us.  Not just in our home, but everywhere: the office, public places, the landscape.  It’s everywhere, and it’s so ingrained in our culture and society that, like the big old elephant planted on the living room sofa, most people can’t even see it.  It becomes the landscape of their homes, their communities, their lives.

            Stuff pervades our society, our world.  About a month ago, an environmental activist named Annie Leonard teamed up with the Sustainability Funders, the Tides Foundation and Free Range Studios, producers of “The Meatrix” and “Grocery Store Wars,” to produce “The Story of Stuff.”  In the 20-minute film, available on the website www.thestoryofstuff.com, Leonard explains just how stuff comes into being, how it’s made, consumed and disposed of. 

            Leonard spent a decade working as an activist, traveling the world and investigating how our consumer-oriented economy works.  She looked behind the façade of the big box stores and traced “stuff” back to its raw materials, followed the trail through production, distribution, consumption and disposal.

            The film is full of facts (the script, available for download at the website, includes citations of sources) and tells the chilling story of how the linear system noted above is depleting the planets resources, exploiting developing countries and spiritually and morally bankrupting the rest of us.  From toxins in our pillows to work-watch TV-spend cycle many are caught up in, it all points to a deep dysfunction in the way our society and culture are oriented.

            Did you know that the average size of a house in this country has doubled since the 1970s (maybe tripled or better if you look around certain neighborhoods in our local communities)?  Each of us produces 4.5 pounds of waste per day?  The food with the highest level of toxic contaminants is human breast milk?  Only 4 percent of the original forests in the U.S. remain?  Only 1 percent of the materials used to produce our stuff is in use six months down the road. Don’t take my word for it; watch the film, or better yet, download the script and check the sources.

            It all comes down to too much stuff.  According to Leonard, people today consume twice as much as they did 50 years ago.  That’s not an accident, she says; it was planned.  When World War II ended, the U.S. was left with a productive war economy that no longer had a purpose. The chairman of President Eisenhower’s council of economic advisors said the economy’s “ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.”  A retailing analyst named Victor Lebow put it this way: “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

            That’s where we are today.  Stuff gets produced, consumed and disposed of at an alarming rate.  Leonard cites an industrial design journal from the 1950s where designers discuss how fast items can break and still provide consumers with enough faith to go buy more.  Along with this planned obsolescence, she talks about “perceived obsolescence,” which is all about fashion, coolness factor and things like computer speed and memory.

            The solution, Leonard says, is to change our mindset, create a circular rather than a linear system of production, utilizing recycled materials to preserve natural resources, look to local food producers and reject the “consume” mentality that pervades our society. 

            Locally, towns should encourage more recycling. Chatham’s efforts in this area ramped up last year, with a website dedicated to recycling education and recycling bins at Lighthouse Beach.  Chatham has the resources to extend things by buying more recycling bins for downtown and the rest of the town’s beaches, and investing in the equipment and people necessary to collect recyclables.  While there will be an upfront cost — minimal in the scheme of things — the payoff in the long run will be worth the investment, through reduced trucking and disposal fees.  The Lighthouse Beach test run shows people are willing to recycle; let’s take advantage of that.

            The Story of Stuff website has many other suggestions and resources for those interested in being responsible consumers or simply reducing the amount of stuff in their lives.  Nothing’s going to change overnight, but being aware of stuff and where it comes from is a start.

1/3/08