Task 6c: Video Reflections - The Story of Stuff

24th July, 2010

The video “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard is a great video that reminds everyone about the origin of the products we have been using, as designers, our job is not just design and product nice looking products, without a care of any other things happening around us, but the products we design have not just impacted the consumers, but also the environment, in Leonard’s video, she has broken up the process into five parts, Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal.
As Leonard suggested, Extraction is just a name used to cover the word “trashing the Earth”, nowadays, one-third of the Earth’s natural resources has been “extracted”, in the US, there are only 4% of forest left and 40% of water became undrinkable. By watching how the people are “trashing the Earth” it is scary to just even think about how the future will be like.
And during the production, there are toxics putted to production of products, which means there are toxics during product productions, and the products itself, and people who work in the toxic factories are people that must work in there just to live, which I find it very disturbing and disgusting, people are not being treated like they should as human, and sometimes they are children who produce the product, they are risking their life in producing the product, instead of having a fun childhood, they are using their life to produce products we use. Thinking about it, makes me feel guilty in using products.
So after we used the products, the disposal of the product gets burnt to the air and produce toxics which pollutes the air environment, and some disposal get dumped in the ground which also pollutes the ground and the climate, leading the world to a climate change. There is why we need to recycle, of course, recycle can help, but it does not fully solve the core problem we are facing, because we can never fully separate a product and recycle them.
After watching the video, I realize how much waste we produce everyday, just looking at this video already get my concern about the future of this world we are living in today, so I suppose as a future designer, one of my concern will be the environment, because before I watch this video, my main concern is the design of the product, but this emotional video have deeply changed the way of my thinking.