I have just seen a short movie by Annie Leonard “The Story of Stuff”. In the clip she speaks about environmental and consumer market in the developed world and especially US. In the clip, Annie had the opinion that corporations are more influential than the government. And corporation’s goal is to earn more and more by increasing their sales. Corporations do so by selling at cheaper prices, actually cheaper than the production cost. What does it mean? Buyer is not paying the whole price of the stuff, then who is paying for the cost? People, where the production is being carried out, and they pay at the cost of their natural resources, then those working in factories and stores having no insurance and keeping toxics within their bodies. But people are not forced to buy new things but they buy since advertisement force them to buy according to latest fashion. And what actually happens to the stuff?. According to her, 99% of stuff turns into junk in just 6 months which during the decomposition process turns into toxics.
In the whole video she has drawn an overall good picture of need for new stuff, how to make cheap products, ask people to buy them through advertisement, then keep them updating after a certain period of time and throwing the old stuff into junk. And she has some clear intention to educate the people from this aspect and think about the recycling of the junk material. In my opinion the scope of this short film is to make people think before buying new stuff but I doubt it looks some exaggeration in the figures mentioned by Annie Leonard.
