On my wanderings around the web this afternoon I found this great website The Story of Stuff. It’s worth spending the 20 minutes watching the video here: it explains a complex subject well and the main points it gets over are important to us all. I could quibble with one or two facts that don’t sound correct to me, but not the main substance.
The author of the Story of Stuff is Annie Leonard, who has taken the time to understand thoroughly the whole process of how we use “stuff”, from extracting the natural resources, through manufacture, retail, getting stuff back to our homes, to disposal. It clearly shows the problems that the we have with the current levels of consumption and explains that this level of consumption is not necessary, it was simply developed in the last fifty years to generate wealth in the USA (and the rest of us have copied this model). One of the most evil aspects to my mind is the concept of planned obselescence: the manufacture of goods that will fall apart in only a year or two or three, so we have to buy another. This gets me wild! Perceived obselescence is bad too, where people are persuaded by advertising buy something new just because their old items doesn’t have the latest shape.
With yours2share I’m doing my bit. If we all shared a bit more we would use fewer resources. I’m also glad that many people tend to buy better quality items when they are sharing them, partly because they will last longer.