The Story of Stuff Project

World’s top corporations cause $2.2 trillion in environmental damage

A study currently underway for the United Nations is calculating the cost of pollution and other environmental  damage caused by the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world. The study, which will be published this summer, has found that the economic cost of environmental damage by these top 3,000 companies is $2.2 trillion dollars, or more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, other pollution, and water degradation. The final amount is likely to increase once additional costs – like toxic waste – are incorporated.

In an article about this upcoming report, the Guardian newspaper wrote: “The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.”

So basically, what this upcoming report says is that a big chunk – about 1/3 – of the profits that these big companies are making is due to the fact that they are not paying the full costs of operating. They are shoving a whole range of costs – from pollution to climate change to water depletion – onto communities around the world – onto us! Communities around the world are bearing the costs with degraded health, soil, water and climate change. That’s just not fair.

In the Story of Stuff film, I talked about how externalized costs allowed me to buy a little radio for the irrationally low price of $4.99. This report in a good first step at showing the global scale of externalized costs. If we’re going to get our economy and environment back in order, a top priority must be forcing companies to pay the full costs of production. In economist-speak, this means internalizing externalities. That would be a strong motivator to get companies to invest in the cleaner, less polluting approaches and encourage all of us to avoid superfluous consumption. If the true cost of that cotton t-shirt or iPod was really included in the price tag, we might think twice before chucking and replacing it before we really need to. Think about that next time you look at those insanely low prices on so much consumer stuff – who is really paying the full cost of producing all this? Apparently not the companies which make it!

Today is the official Martin Luther King Day in the United States, chosen to commemorate Dr. King’s birthday, which is actually January 15th. In the U.S., it’s a real federal holiday, with banks and post offices and schools closed to honor this outspoken advocate for social justice.

Last Friday, the final school day before Martin Luther King Day, I passed a multi-ethnic group of school children, holding signs with King’s face in one hand and holding another child’s hand in the other.  Led by their teacher, they were sweetly marching down Martin Luther King Way in downtown Berkeley.  Last Wednesday, I went to an event at Martin Luther King Middle School, a beautiful school with top notch facilities and programs led by racially diverse staff for its racially diverse student body.  At my daughter’s school, a visiting 7 year old student from Italy, whose English was not quite fluent, stood up and recited the some lines from King’s “I have a dream” speech which, he said, is studied in Italian grade schools. Wow, “I have a dream” in Italian grade schools? Black and white kids holding hands and walking down a major street named after Martin Luther King? An excellent public school, even named after Dr. King, for kids of all colors?  A visitor to parts of this planet, if staying only briefly, might think we’ve overcome racism and social injustices since the time of Martin Luther King.

I wish it were so. Sadly, on so many fronts – including the environment – we have far to go.

When it comes to the distribution of environmental goods and harm, huge disparities still exist between communities of people with white skin and those with skin that isn’t white.

This reality, often called environmental racism, was first brought to national attention in the U.S. though the groundbreaking report, “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States,” published by the United Church of Christ in 1987. This was the first study to solidly document that race is the most significant factor when siting hazardous waste facilities nationwide.  Race. Not geological stability or proximity to groundwater or any number of other criteria we might think would top the list when figuring out where to put a toxic waste site. The data in this report – for example, evidence that showed that three out of every five African-Americans and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites – was shocking.

But you know what is even more shocking?  In the past twenty years, the problem hasn’t been solved and, in some cases, is getting worse!

In 2007, twenty years after the release of the first report, the UCC released Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty, 1987 – 2007, which said: “Race continues to be an independent predictor of where hazardous wastes are located, and it is a stronger predictor than income, education and other socioeconomic indicators. People of color now comprise a majority in neighborhoods with
commercial hazardous waste facilities.”

The fact that 20 years later, environmental racism persists and, in fact, has increased is shameful.  Of course, the answer to environmental racism is not some sort of “equitable pollution” in which we all share the toxic burden equally; the answer is to clean up our production processes and environmental governance so that no one-regardless of age or race or income, regardless of if they are living now or in generations to come-has to subsidize toxic processes and products. Period.

Martin Luther King said, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. “

I’d like to suggest that today not be a day off, but a day on . A day on which we devote extra time to ending the silence about environmental racism and join the growing global movement for environmental justice. Read the United Church of Christ’s Toxic Waste and Race reports and tell your friends, your neighbors, write to your local paper and elected officials. Let’s make sure that another twenty years doesn’t pass with this injustice unstopped.

Dr King also said “We must work unceasingly to uplift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a higher plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”  That higher destiny must include a healthy and safe environment for all people, regardless of their income, race, religion, or really anything.

There are many organizations in the United States, as well as around the world, working to promote environmental justice and to transform production process away from toxic chemicals. To find some organizations near you, check out the list at Story of Stuff and call one to find out how you can get involved.

I want to pause in the midst of the much needed debate about climate change solutions, as I do every December 2^nd -3^rd to remember Bhopal.

Last night was the 25th anniversary of the disaster in Bhopal, India,  where a Union Carbide  pesticide plant released 27 tons of toxic chemical into a crowded sleeping city, killing 8,000 immediately and injuring over a half a million people. It is widely recognized as the world’s biggest industrial chemical accident ever.

I’ve been to Bhopal, where survivors told me stories of waking in the night, feeling a fierce burning in their eyes and throat. First some thought neighbors were burning chilies. Others thought the day of reckoning had come. In the middle of the night, thousands started running. People were trampled, children lost, thousands injured and killed.

The disaster started that night 25 years ago and it continues to this day:

Unbelievably, after 25 years, the company still refuses to share its information on the toxic health impacts of the leaked gas, calling it a “trade secret,” thwarting efforts to provide medical care to victims of exposure. The abandoned Union Carbide factory, now owned by Dow Chemical, still sits there, leaking hazardous chemicals and waste left behind in the aftermath of the disaster, poisoning the next generation of Bhopalis.

Yesterday, as on every anniversary, the gas survivors marched in Bhopal demanding health care, clean water, justice and an end to the toxics-based industrial production model in widespread use today.

The survivors aren’t just asking for environmental health and justice for their community but for every community. Their slogan – No More Bhopals – means no more Bhopals there or anywhere. No more toxic chemical poisoning.  No more writing off whole communities as disposable. No more sacrificing people and the planet for business as usual.

As Bhopal survivor Rashida Bee said: “We are not expendable. We are not flowers offered at the altar of profit and power. We are dancing flames committed to conquering darkness and to challenging those who threaten the planet and the magic and mystery of life.”

So today I pause, remember and renew my resolve to keep working towards a world with No More Bhopals.

Those of us in the U.S. are wrapping up our work weeks today to spend tomorrow with friends and family, gathered around big home cooked meals and giving thanks.

Yes, I know that the history of this particular holiday is not nearly as charming as our children’s schoolbooks portray, but for many, the gathering isn’t about participating in a fabricated historical tale, but is about pausing in our hectic lives and honestly sincerely giving thanks for those things which make our lives sweeter throughout the year:  our friends,  our family, our community and our work to make world a better place.

Unfortunately, many people across the country leave their home Thanksgiving night to sleep in cold parking lots and line up at stores to participate in the consumer frenzy known as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Retailers know that the Friday after Thanksgiving is the only weekday that many people will have off from work until Christmas, so they widely advertise rock bottom prices to lure people away from their friends and families to go shopping. Adbusters has declared November 27th in the U.S. and 28 November internationally Buy Nothing Day and calls upon us all to restrain from holiday shopping, or from any shopping as well as to unplug our TVs, leave the cars in the garage, and  “from sunrise through sunset, we’ll abstain en masse, not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.”

Last year’s Black Friday hit a new low.

Jdimytai Damour, a 34 year old man from Haiti, was working as a temporary worker at a Wal-Mart in New York State.  At 5:00 am, when the store was scheduled to open, the crowd of shoppers who had been waiting in line in the cold for up to 8 hours, stormed the door and trampled Jdimytai to death.

I think of Jdimytai with every advertisement that I’ve seen urging me to go shopping early on Friday morning. And I’ll be thinking of him as I instead linger around our dinner table, crowded with friends, and when I spend a welcome Friday off of work playing board games and making art projects with the kids and doing any number of things that will be infinitely more fun than sleeping in a cold parking lot to be first in line at the mall.

I hope you’ll do the same.

Happy Thanksgiving.

We deeply appreciate the generous outpouring of support our Project has received over the past 48 hours in response to Glenn Beck’s continuing attack against the use of The Story of Stuff in classrooms across the country.

We created The Story of Stuff to get people thinking and talking. The result over the past two years—not to mention the past two days—speaks for itself.

The messages we’ve received from thousands of teachers and students who’ve seen the film—some of whom thoroughly disagreed with it—gives us confidence that young people are not only fully capable of engaging with the subject matter in the Story of Stuff, they’re asking for it. After all, they are the ones who will have to address climate change and the other environmental and social side effects of our throw away culture.

Beck’s line of attack appears to be motivated by the release of his new book: Arguing with Idiots.

But we have better things to do.

We’re developing a two-week educational curriculum—aligned to national standards, with a strong focus on critical thinking—that provides teachers with a fuller set of tools to help students consider and debate the message of The Story of Stuff.

In response to requests from thousands of faith-based institutions for more information, we’re field-testing a study program that helps people of faith explore how their religious beliefs connect with the message of The Story of Stuff.

We’re also in production on a set of new short films, the first of which we’ll be releasing this November.

We appreciate the new viewers, Facebook friends, contributions and other support that Beck has generated for us, but rather than respond to his outrageous claims, we’re going to stay focused on building the more sustainable, safe and just world our children, and all of us, deserve.

Thanks,

Annie Leonard and the Story of Stuff Project Team

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As those of us in the U.S. know, this past Friday was Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, the official start of the consumption-crazed holiday shopping season.

For the 2 weeks prior to Black Friday, my mail box, my local newspaper and my computer spam filter were loaded with ads heralding rock bottom prices for all sorts of consumer goods. I got ads offering new clothes, new electronics, new furniture which didn’t require any payment at all for up to 24 months! Retailers were clearly worried: would people come shopping in the face of growing economic insecurity, rising gas prices, mounting consumer debt, collapsing mortgages, and increasing unemployment? If there was ever a year to skip shopping on Black Friday – as well as more broadly – this is it.

But people did shop. Across the country, people left the Thanksgiving dinners early on Thursday night to sleep in their cars and line up in store parking lots hours before scheduled store openings, which were moved forward to 5:00 am in many places. Putting aside for now the bogus manufactured myth of the origins of this uniquely U.S. holiday, it is nonetheless a time for families and loved ones to stop working, to gather and give thanks. It is one of the few national holidays that don’t dictate buying stuff to show one’s affection for another. While there is a budding Thanksgiving paraphernalia industry (little plastic turkeys for the front yard, rosy cheeked pilgrim placemats), for my generation of people in the U.S., the day remains primarily about gratitude, not consumption.  It requires spending the day cooking, baking, and chopping. It requires hours of playing board games and exchanging stories with family members perhaps only seen once or twice a year.

I spent my Thanksgiving with 20 close friends in a rural area, with no TV and spotty cell phone coverage. Only an occasional text message came through, including one from a friend, Ariane, telling me that a worker at a Wal-Mart had been trampled to death by out of control shoppers.

When I got home last night, I learned more. Shoppers began gathering in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart on Long Island, New York, at 9:00 pm Thanksgiving evening. At 5:00 am, when the store was scheduled to open, the crowd of more than 2,000 people stormed the door. A temporary worker, 34 year old Jdimytai Damour, was overwhelmed by the crowd surging to get inside. Witnesses said people walked over Damour to get to the bargains promised inside.  Emergency medical officers who arrived to help were also jostled and stepped on by the shoppers. Damour was pronounced dead just after 6:00 am. He died of asphyxiation; he was trampled to death.
Wal-Mart didn’t adequately prepare for the crowds, even though a high turnout was expected and this same store had problems last year, even though police had met Wal-Mart before Black Friday to suggest enhanced security measures. Wal-Mart had not bothered to erect barricades, develop systems to moderate and control the number of people who entered at a time or set up any number of measures that could have held back the surging crowd, as other stores did in preparation for the biggest, most manic shopping day of the year. For all these reasons, I believe this as not an accident; it was inevitability. The local Police Commissioner, Lawrence Mulvey, called the situation a “recipe for disaster.”
Sadly, the disaster extends far beyond this one senseless death.

Our consumption driven economy depends on a pattern of constant exploitation and violence towards both people and the planet. This violence is largely hidden from view for us shoppers in wealthy countries, but communities around the world know the reality, even if it isn’t shown on TV or in shiny advertisements. Violence happens at the point of extraction, when communities are displaced and water supplies are poisoned with toxic chemicals from mining operations. Violence happens at the production stage, when workers are exposed to chemicals linked to cancer, neurological disorders, and birth defects. Violence happens at the disposal end, when unwanted electronics – laced with toxic heavy metals and flame retardants – are shipped to China and India because wealthy consumers don’t want them in our own communities anymore.
Yes, Wal-Mart should have taken more precautionary action and it should be held accountable for its lack of responsibility. But  the problem goes far beyond Wal-Mart. As Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming said: “Today, it happened to be Wal-Mart. It could have been any other store where hundreds and hundreds of people gather.”

Our current economy depends on excessive levels of personal consumption, even when this consumer spending is resulting in personal and ecological debt beyond a sustainable level. As a result, both the economic and the ecological systems are in crisis. Both need immediate attention and drastic interventions.

It’s the perfect time to go beyond a band aid approach to the connected economic-ecological problems. This is a perfect moment for raising the hard questions, for challenging and replacing the underlying system that is trashing both the planet and its people.  Right now U.S. government is figuring out how to rescue the sinking U.S. economy. Right now, world leaders are meeting in Poznan, Poland to figure out how to prevent even more climate disruption. Right now, a family in New York is mourning the death of Jdimytai Damour. 

Let’s turn it around. Let’s disengage from the consumer frenzy this holiday season. For many of us, it would be a relief to both give and receive less stuff this year. Spend less time at stores like Wal-Mart and more time with our friends and families. Donate to those in need, in lieu of ever more superfluous gift giving. Let’s make our displays of love be a net plus, rather than a drain, on our budgets, our communities and our planet.

Let’s honor Jdimytai Damour by promising “never again.” Let’s celebrate the holiday season in ways that build something new.

This past September, news of the economic crisis dominated the headlines. At the exact same time another debt crisis was intensifying, yet was barely noticed.

Earth Overshoot Day, also known as Ecological Debt Day, was September 23.This is the day in 2008 by which humanity had used all the resources that the planet will generate this year. As viewers of The Story of Stuff already know, we currently consume 1.4 planets’ worth of global resources each year. From September 23rd on, we’re eating into the natural capital, undermining its ability to produce for the future. We’re consuming on credit and accumulating ecological debt that we have no way to repay.

Ecology and economics share a common root: the Greek word oikos, meaning “home.” Economics and ecology both are about managing our home. In our current situation, we have messed up both.  Continue reading here.

We’re obsessive over economic indicators. We track indicators hourly, panic at the slightest decline, invest billions when it is shaky. Yet, we have a  huge collective blind spot to the other ecological management, even though it’s a bigger problem, both in terms of survival and even in terms of finances. There is a growing call coming from all over the world, to integrate our understanding of the economic and ecological crises and to ensure that a solution to one is a solution to both.

Crisis and opportunity are often referred to as two sides of the same coin. That is definitely true here. The current economic crisis provides us a much needed opportunity to re-evaluate the priorities of our economy, to develop new metrics for measuring real progress, for reducing superfluous consumption while increasing economic equity and ensuring the integrity of the ecological systems on which life depends.

My friend Rita always says “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” Clearly, what we’re doing isn’t working. As David Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth, suggests, it’s time to try something new.