In “The Story of Stuff”, Annie Leanord presents a very politicized account of
the current consumerist society and the negative effects this has on the
environment, the third world, and society at large. This documentary is supposedly
full of facts as she throws out many statistics. I had a hard time believing all of these
statistics and I wanted to know more about where she gets these “facts”. In the
description of “The Story of Stuff” video on YouTube there is a link “for all you fact
checkers” that takes you to a link on their website where you can download the fact
sheet (I was finally able to find it here http://storyofstuff.org//wp-
content/uploads/movies/scripts/StoryofStuff_FactSheet.pdf).
One statistic she gives to support our trashing of the earth’s natural resources
is that in the United States we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
Checking the annotation leads to an article that “confirms” this statistic by saying
that 95%-98% of forests have been logged at least once. This completely ignores
reforestation efforts that have been extremely effective in our country. The
government has protected many natural forests and the incentive is there for
companies to plant trees where they harvest them. In the Mark Sagoff article “Do
We Consume Too Much?” he discusses this in his section about the misconception
that we are running out of natural materials. Leanord ignores the fact that we have
more forested area today than in 1920, and that we can use these resources more
efficiently than ever, which Sagoff states in his article.
As we use our planet’s natural resources (which Leanord says we have used
one-third in the past thirty years) the price of these resources goes up. As prices
increase and technology advances, corporations or whoever is using them are
