While it may seem sometimes like we’re living in a futuristic world full of advanced technology (check out a video of Cisco’s holographic telepresence if you need convincing on this point), we’re still remarkably archaic in how we get energy. Think for a second about where most of our energy comes from. The answer is burning stuff. We burn stuff in our cars planes and ships in order to get around, we burn stuff for heat, and we burn stuff to make electricity. It’s really quite primitive if you think about it. Surely we’ve progressed to the point where we can do better than using fire to make things go, haven’t we? 

'You don't filter smokestacks and water. Instead, you put the filter on your head and design the problem out of existence.'

- William McDonough

With the green movement growing everyday people are making simple changes to their everday life to help make our earth a healthier place to live. Here are some interesting facts about waste, pollution and recycling.

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration.

Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.” Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today.

Click here to watch the Story of Stuff

Leonard’s inspiration for the film began as a personal musing over the question, “Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?” She traveled the world in pursuit of the answer to this seemingly innocent question, and what she found along the way were some very guilty participants and their unfortunate victims.

Written by Leonard, the film was produced by Free Range Studios, the makers of other highly popular web-based films such as “The Meatrix” and “Grocery Store Wars.” Funding for the project came from the Sustainability Funders (The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption) and Tides Foundation.

Source: www.thestoryofstuff.com.