So, some time ago I was shown this video “The Story of Stuff”, a project created by Annie Leonard. She is an environmentalist who worked on international environmental health and sustainability issues, among other things like Greenpeace International, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and others.
This project has, so far, 2 seasons, the first with 7 short animated videos explaining some of our everyday environmental, social and economic problems and how they’re related to one another. The second season is more focused on what is behind these social, environmental and economical problems and how we can act on them.
Season 1
The very first movie is “The Story of Stuff”, released in December of 2007, and it basically talks about consumism. How our urge to always have new things affect the world’s nature, those who manuracutre and produce them and ourselves.
Released on December of 2009, the second video is “The Story of Cap & Trade”, and it explains the problems of this market-based approach to control pollution and reduce the emission of pollutants.
The third video is “The Story of Bottled Water”, and it was released on March of 2010. This animation talks about the reasons that drive us to preffer bottled water over tap water, and the waste problems that comes with it.
“The Story of Cosmetics”, released on July of 2010, to me is the scariest video so far. It talks about the chemicals in our personal care products and to me, it’s scary because it almost feels like another “theory of conspiracy”, the only problem is that it sounds too real and logic to be just a theory…
Finally, the last video, “The Story of Electronics”, released on November of 2010 talks about how the industry produces electronics to not last in order to make us, the consumers, buy more, and, therefore, dispose and pollute more.
Season 2
The first video of the season 2 is “The Story of Citizens United v Fec”, and it’s about politics and how we, people, are losing (or have lost) control over the democracy for corporations.
“The Story of Subsidies” is the next video, and it’s supposed to come out over the Fall of 2010. I’ll make sure to post it here as soon as it’s available. This last animation is about government fundings on unsustainable policies that support the very same destructive economic model we live in, instead of investing on ways and projects to improve our quality of life as a society.
