THE STORY OF STUFF
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Roane County, Tennessee, 35
Rocks, 20–29
Rogers, Heather, 228, 232
Rosario, Juan, 65
Rosy periwinkle, 2–3, 35
Rwanda, 27, 28
Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, 97
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Campaign, 84
Salt water, 15
San Francisco, California, 235–236
Sarangi, Satinath, 91
Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 31–33
Schettler, Ted, 74, 78, 79
Schor, Juliet, 156, 167, 168, 246, 247
Scorecard, 94
Scott, Lee, 122
Sea levels, 13
Seattle, Washington, 133–134
Seinfeld, Jerry, 182
Seldman, Neil, 228
Sequestration, 2
Sewage systems, 12
Shaman Pharmaceuticals, 3
Sharing and borrowing, 43, 237–238
Shell Oil, 31–33
Shoe repairs, 194
Shopping, 147–148
Shopping malls, 124–125
Shower curtains, 69
Shukla, Champa Devi, 91
Sierra Leone, 26, 35
Silent Spring (Carson), 98
Silicon, 59
Silicon Valley, 57–58
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 63
Silicosis, 59
Silver, 59
SmartWay Transport program, 115
Smith, Alisa, 140–141
Smith, Kari, 165
Smith, Ted, 58
Sodium hydroxide, 60
Soesterberg Principles, 63
Soil, 7, 12
Solar power, 34, 36
South Africa, 23–24, 26, 221–223, 258
South Korea, 135
Soy inks, 55
Spain, 31, 71
Species extinction, 4
Speth, Gus, 167
Stainless steel, 44
Staples, 9
Steam engine, invention of, 101
Stevens, Brooks, 161, 163
Stewart, Howard, 225
Stoller Chemical, 219
Story of Stuff, The (film), 56, 147, 162
Suicide, teen, 150
Sulfonamides, 48
Sulfur dioxide, 65
Sulfuric acid, 48, 60
Superfund sites, 57, 97, 208
Supply chains, 107–113, 117, 256
Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative, 34, 231
Sustainable Forestry Initiative, 10
Sweatshops, 49–50, 51
Switkes, Glenn, 66
Synthetic materials, 44–45, 75, 78, 80
Take-back programs, 29, 206
Talberth, John, 242
Tantalum (coltan), 27–29, 35, 246
Tar sands, 254
Target, 118
Television, 167–168, 262
Tetramethylammonium, 60
Texaco, 30
Text messages, 57
Thor Chemicals, 221–223
Thoreau, Henry David, 147
Thornton, Thomas, 245
Timber plantations, 5
Tin, 59
Toluene, 55
Total economic value framework, 18
Totally chlorine free (TCF) process, 54, 56
Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, 82, 97
Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007 (United Church of Christ), 89
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (United Church of Christ), 88
Toxics Release Inventory, 93–94
Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA), 218
Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), 218–219
Toyota, 71, 108, 111
Toys, 74, 111
Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, 136, 255
Trans-Atlantic Network for Clean Production, 63
Transition Towns, 141–142
Trees, 2–10, 21
Triclosan, 79
Trucks, 113–115, 123
Ts’ai Lun, 52
Tucker, Cora, 88
Turkey, 50, 157–158
Tweeting, 57
Uganda, 27
Underground (subsurface) mining, 20
Unhappiness/happiness, 149–155
UNICOR, 205
Union Carbide Corporation, 90–93
United Church of Christ (UCC), 88, 89
United Nations, 38, 146
Center for Trade and Development, 228
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16
Environment Programme (UNEP), 75
Food and Agriculture Organization, 47
Human Development Index, 242
Human Poverty Index, 151
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 137–139
UPS (United Parcel Service), 115
Uranium, 35
Urban Ore, 200
Urea resins, 48
USA*Engage, 258
Uzbekistan, 45, 46
Vacations, 247
VCM (vinyl chloride monomer), 68
Vinblastin, 2
Vincristine, 2
Vinyl Institute, 70, 265–266
Virtual water, 17, 46
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 55, 209
Voluntary Simplicity (Elgin), 158–159, 181
Wal-Mart, 71, 107, 116, 120–127, 145, 188
Walden (Thoreau), 147
Wales, 251–252
Wallach, Lori, 134
Walton, Sam, 121
War, 243–245
Washington State, 2, 6, 11
Waste Makers, The (Packard), 163, 194
Waste Management, Inc., 230
Waste-to-energy plants, 215
Wastewater, 61, 86, 208
Water, 10–19, 46
Water footprint, 17, 46
Water pollution, 18, 49
Water scarcity, 16, 46
Water warriors, 19
Water Wars, 140
Watson, Alan, 252
Waxman, Henry, 93
Waxman-Markey climate bill, 209
We All Live Downstream: A Guide to Waste Treatment that Stops Water Pollution (Costner), 11
WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) directive, 234
Weissman, Rob, 132
When Corporations Rule the World (Korten), 109
Whole Foods, 188
Wicks, Judy, 141
Wildlife, 3–4
Williams, Eric, 60
Williams, Ted, 196
Wind power, 34
WiserEarth, 241
Wiwa v. Shell, 33
Women’s Voices for the Earth, 262
Woods, Tiger, 165
Worker health and safety, 47, 49–50, 59, 60, 62, 68, 84–87, 108, 122–124, 134, 160
Working hours, 246–247
World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), 38, 39, 128–132, 137, 140, 216
World Bank Bonds Boycott (WBBB), 39
World Bank Group, 38–39
World Health Organization, 13, 59, 222, 223
World Trade Organization (WTO), 128–129, 132–136, 140, 255
World War II, 128
World Wildlife Fund, 40
Worldwatch Institute, 67, 149
Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, 41
Xylene, 60
Yasuní rainforest, 30–31
Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), 6
Zambia, 130
Zero waste programs, 216, 234–236
Zinc, 59
Zipcar, 43
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Annie Leonard, born in Seattle in 1964, learned to love nature in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. When as a college student in New York City she saw her beloved trees turned to wastepaper and packaging, she followed them to the world’s largest dump, and found her calling. After a stint doing graduate work at Cornell University in upstate New York, she spent nearly two decades tracking international waste trafficking and fighting incineration
around the world, first as an employee of Greenpeace International from 1988–1996. She later worked in Ralph Nader’s Washington office for Essential Action, and then for the Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives (GAIA), Health Care Without Harm and The Sustainability Funders. In 2007 she created The Story of Stuff, a video that summarized her learnings from two decades on the international trail of waste. It has been watched over 7 million times—and counting—and translated into over a dozen languages. In 2008, she was one of TIME magazine’s Heroes of the Environment. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter, in a community committed to sustainability and sharing.
Ariane Conrad, aka the Book Doula, is a writer, editor, and activist. She co-authored the New York Times bestselling The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones (Harper One, 2008) and HOOPING by Christabel Zamor (Workman Publishing, 2009). Visit her at bookdoula.com.
* There are inconsistencies in calculations of the “recycled” sources of the aluminum supply. The U.S. Geological Survey, for example, differentiates between “old,” or postconsumer, scrap, and “new,” or preconsumer, scrap, which consists of leftover shreds from the production process that never leave the factory. The Aluminum Association, an industry trade group, lumps these streams together in its calculations, which gives the impression that a higher percentage (close to a third) of aluminum comes from “recycled” (or “recovered”) sources, when in truth real recycling (postconsumer) accounts for less than one-fifth of the supply. (Jennifer Gitliz, The Role of the Consumer in Reducing Primary Aluminum Demand, a report by the Container Recycling Institute for the International Strategic Roundtable on the Aluminum Industry (São Luís, Brazil, October 16–18, 2003, p.9).
* POPs are so bad that a United Nations Convention was created to target them, outlawing some and severely restricting others. To start with, the Stockholm Convention identified twelve top-priority POPs: eight pesticides (aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, and toxaphene); two industrial chemicals (the hexachlorobenzenes (HCBs) and the polychlorinated biphenyls [PCBs]); and two groups of industrial by-products (dioxins and furans). In May 2009, additional chemicals were included: HCH/Lindane, HBB, Penta and Octa DBE, Chlordecone, PFOS and pentachlorobenzene. Source: Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, http://chm.pops.int.
* While Makower now estimates that forty times more waste is created upstream than by households, previous estimates have been much higher. The seventy-times figure used in The Story of Stuff film came from Brenda Platt, a waste analyst with the Washington, D.C., based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Her report (with co-author Neil Seldman) Wasting and Recycling in the United States 2000 stated that “for every ton of municipal discards wasted, about 71 tons of manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration, agricultural, coal combustion, and other discards are produced.” Platt based this calculation on data in the Office of Technology Assessment report Managing Industrial Solid Wastes from Manufacturing, Mining, Oil and Gas Production, and Utility Coal Combustion (OTA-BP-O-82), February 1992, pp. 7, 10. Either way, the point is that there’s a whole lot more waste being made beyond the Stuff we haul to our curbs each week, so if we really want to make a dent in our waste production, we need to be looking upstream to where the bulk of it is generated.