Video Rflection- The Story of Stuff

Before watching the video: The Story of Stuff, I thought the procedure we get the products is just four steps: from extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal as the text book told. However, there were a lot of important things missing between them.




One important thing missing was that this system is a linear system, so there is no comeback, as the planet we living on has limited resources, once used up, they are gone and will never come back. So this kind of system will lead to a bad end. The system actually exists in our daily life, it is related to societies, cultures, economies, the environment. It also related to we people, which is missing in the system. Government is one of the most important kind of people, thought they spend lots of money on military, they still got the value taking care of us, they are of the people, by the people, for the people. Then along came the corporation, which is more powerful than government, that lead the consequence that government cares more about the corporation than citizens.



There are other things missing in the picture. In the extraction part, people exploring and getting resources from the earth, they chop down trees, they blow up mountains to get the metals inside, they use up all the water and they wipe out the animals. In one word, we are ruing the planet and running out of resources. And in the production part, we use power to mix toxic chemicals in with the natural resources to make toxic contaminated products. So what we got will be danger to our later life. And we don’t know the influence on the entire environment that we are living in. Not only in the products, but even more leave as by-products, or pollution. And it’s a lot of pollution.



Consumption is the heart of the system, the engine that drives it. We have become a nation of consumers. Our primary identity has become that of being consumers, the primary way that our value is measured and demonstrated. So people keep buying things to show their value, and the products we bought before became trash. As a matter of fact, a lot of products are designed for the dump, so stuff will become useless quickly after buying it, so people will buy another one. Factories make more money in this way.



However, the dumped products becomes trash, all of this garbage either gets dumped in a landfill, or burned. Either way, both pollute the air, land, water and the climate. Also, the toxics get out from burning goes back in the production stage. So one way to deal with it is recycle, though it doesn’t help a lot, because it is hard for people to separate trash.



It’s necessary for people start doing something to prevent the earth, like saving forests and clean production and conscious consuming and blocking landfills and incinerators. The most important thing is to taking back our government, so it is really is by the people and for the people. We should build a system that doesn’t waste resources or people.