Story of Stuff

Notes:

• The materials economy runs through a process of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal.
• Every step has an interaction between the system and the real societies, cultures, and environments. 
• We are running out of natural resources, for a number of reasons. For example, the US has only 5% of the world's population but uses 30% of global resources. 
• In the Amazon Forest alone, we are losing 2,000 trees per minute.
• In production, toxic chemicals are added to the natural resources. 
• Externalized costs mean that the social cost is more taxing than the product's cost.
• 99% of items run through the system to later be thrown away after 6 months. 
• The average US person consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago.
• Planned obsolescence are designed for the dump, so we throw things away and buy new ones.
• Perceived obsolescence convinces you to throw stuff away that us perfectly fine, 
• People in the U.S. see more advertisements in one year than people did 50 years ago in a lifetime.
• The average united states resident produces about 4.5 pounds of garbage per day.
• The garbage is dumped into landfills or incinerated, which both contribute to pollution and climate change.
• Recycling is not enough because many products are not designed to be recycled. 
• People united can change the way the system works. 

Q3: Annie says “recycling doesn’t get to the core of the problem.” Why not?

   For every one garbage can of waste, we put out, 70 other garbage cans of waste were used to produce the waste in that one garbage can. Also,  much of our garbage cannot be recycled because it either contains too many toxins, or it is designed not to be recycled. For example, there are juice boxes that are lined with layers of metal, paper, and plastic, so they cannot be separated for recycling. Although recycling is extremely important to help reduce waste and reuse products, the fact of the matter is that there are more things we can do to make a difference, because just recycling isn't enough.