Lidia Kim
Ethics Economics and Ecology
The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff, true to its title, is about stuff: where it comes from, what we do with it, and how we dispose of it when we don't want it anymore. Using a combination of statistical evidence, anecdotes, and case studies, Annie Leonard walks us through the world we are living in in terms of consumption. She breaks the cycle of consumption down into five parts and devotes a chapter of the book to each: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. Each section of the book tells of the environmental and health dangers of our current practices. While Leonard does try to tell us about the good things that are going on in each chapter and includes promising laws and possible helpful individual actions in appendices, the overall tone of the book is dark. She highlight’s our countries’ wrongdoings, and offers theoretical
Leonard begins her journey of “stuff” with the process of extraction. The first chapter deals with how, where and what resources are collected in order to begin their arduous transformation into everyday consumer items like cell phones, clothing, and paper. Our precious stuff would be nothing without the raw material necessary to create them. Leonard organizes all basic resources into 3 simple categories: tree, water and rock. With each of the categories, The Story of Stuff explores a plethora of environmental and moral concerns in harvesting. She outlines the ecological, economic, and social ramifications of over-extraction. Deforestation, the process necessary in paper manufacturing, is devastating natural forests and their potential for biodiversity. It is destroying the homes of indigenous cultures, and could unknowingly be decreasing the scope of medicinally useful plant species. Similarly mineral mining has resulted in similar problems. When talking about