A friend recently told me about The Story of Stuff, a short film that examines the production, consumption, and waste processes and suggests what we can do about them. Did you know that only one percent of what we in North America buy is still in use six months later? One percent. That's nuts. These ideas of disposability (I think I just made that word up) and obsolescence haven't been around for ever: in fact, only since the 1950s have we thrown so much stuff away.
I'm a believer in green and ethical consumerism (I even run a wiki dedicated to it), but in the end we need to consume less and think about the sources of all our stuff. What chemicals are used in making and disposing of our cosmetics, iPods, computers, clothes? How did extracting natural resources impact the environment? We can't let commercials and materialism lull us into complacency. Watch this and you'll see what I mean.
