The Story of Stuff How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-- And A Vision For Change

The Story of Stuff How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-- And A Vision For Change by Annie Leonard

This book is an anti-consumerist statement about consuming and wasting too much.  It describes how Americans waste huge amounts of materials.  Annie Leonard asks people to use less, use less toxic materials, buy things more carefully and choose more durable environmentally friendly products.

Annie Leonard is tracking how stuff is made.  It is a description of dangerous, inefficient, and wasteful consumption.  The book starts with extraction of resources, moves to production, then distribution, consumption, and finally disposal of goods.  She describes how the United States creates a society focused on getting more and more goods, planning to make them quickly obsolete, and then driving even more demand with advertising.

I like the idea of having fewer things that are more durable, better quality, and easier to reuse or recycle. I also can identify with the authors wish that people in the United States were more community focused.  I would like to see more recycled goods, green chemistry, and other products in supermarkets and stores.

However, I did find parts of this book to be a bit overbearing.  She is preaching at times against globalization, for fair trade, and often talks about human rights in fairly strong progressive language.  At points it seems unrealistic.  For example, she claims that we can survive on only solar and wind for energy.   Things like distributed hydroelectric, biofuels, and ocean power are not even touched on.

At the end of the book, we get a picture of a kind of agrarian paradise without cars, public gardens, and lots of public transportation.  It has a kind of far out feeling to it.  We are supposed to voluntarily reduce our carbon footprint to next to nothing.  It seemed a bit unrealistic.

The sentiment is easy to relate to.  I read the book as part of the Ecolibris campaign to read a book printed on recycled paper.   Recycling is something which I support.

I also found the book to be very much problem oriented.  Annie Leonard spends quite a bit of time writing against pvc plastics and incinerators which are quite toxic. I would have liked to see a litle bit more on solutions to environmental problems.  She makes some brief mentions of biomimicry technology and clean technology.  She derides clean technology as being impractical because there simply will be too many people.

I found this inteeresting. I am for more urban farming, urban greenhouses, farmers markets, and more local production of goods.  However, I don't have that every house should have a compost bin feeling.  I also like the idea of more car sharing and limiting use of cars to the minimum.  I like the concept of having public rental lots like zipcar.

This was an interesting book about wasteful, excess consumption.  However, it often had a politically correct feel to it.  It is worth reading if you are interested in the environment, a green lifestyle, or have an anti-consumerist world view.

Daily Thoughts 11/4/2010 (programs, the story of stuff)

Boston Sunday herald. The Boston herald opera house next Sunday March 8th. (1893-1897)

Daily Thoughts 11/4/2010

Today has been another quiet, steady day.  I spent some time checking the displays.  We had the counselor from SCORE come in today to do small business counseling.  It is his first set of sessions today.  We have four people signed up for one hour sessions.  I also got a call for tomorrow to speak to a gentleman from the Association of Community Based Artists of Westchester who will be talking to me about doing a poetry reading series.  I have his book on display.

There is another meeting from a womans legal service.  We are providing some reading if they want to check out books on issues like parenting, domestic violence, and other things.

The book, The Master Switch The Rise And Fall of Information Empires came in for me to read by Tim Wu.  It is a business history book.

I read some more of The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.  She is writing about consumerism and advertising.  Personally, I am not a fan of having a huge amount of stuff.  I also don't watch much television or advertising.  I do like things, but would rather own less and have it be better quality.  Part of her discussion is about planned obsolescence; making things so that they are easily disposed of.  She also talks about how shopping does not bring happiness.

Tomorrow is the book sale of the Friends of the Library.  I'll definitely stop by and have some coffee and look at the tables of books.

Daily Thoughts 10/31/2010 (The Story of Stuff, ebooks)

Image from The Book of Hallowe'en. Caption "A Black-Cat Table.", 1919, Author Ruth Edna Kelley

Daily Thoughts 10/31/2010

Have a happy Halloween.  The kids were out early today while it was light trick or treating.  We gave out candy.

I've been reading more of The Story of Stuff.  I agree with the author that stuff should be more durable, repairable, recyclable, and upgradable.  Too much stuff which you can buy nowadays is poor quality and easily broken.  I have had the same car for ten years and the same computer for six years with upgrades.  I just fixed my watchband yesterday.  I have had the same watch for over ten years.  I also agree with the idea of reducing the amount of material which we use to make things.  Packaging is getting lighter and more recyclable lightly.  I wish this was true of many other items.

Web Bits

Lynn Abbey, CJ Cherryh, and Jane Fancher have an ebooks site where all the proceeds go to the authors.  They are all excellent fantasy writers. http://www.closed-circle.net/

I took a few minutes to go back and check who was linked to my blog.  There is Publishing Perspectives http://www.publishingperspectives.com/ and Meditative Reading http://meditativereading.blogspot.com/

Daily Thoughts 10/30/2010 (The Story of Stuff, Library Funding)

Geokeys, Globalization

Daily Thoughts 10/30/2010

Sometimes things are a bit tense.   Six people have been offered retirement packages.  There is no way to know if people will take them.  There are added years of service but no additional severance being offered.  With this comes a statement about peace of mind.  Apparently, this is in preparation for further budget cuts from the city.  There is a lot of hearsay flying around so I don't know the exact figures being given.  The final budget for the city is being prepared.  I could guess that we will experience another round of reduction in force, possibly with deeper cuts than before.  It is tiring and uncertain.  Currently the library is $400,000 in debt which is 10% of our current budget.  An easy way to say this is that the city has no money and it is very likely there will be considerable additional cuts.

We will be having a book sale in November on November 5th and 6th to raise money for the friends.  This usually brings in a couple of thousand dollars in total.  It also generates a lot of goodwill.   There is also the annual gala which is going to be hosted in the library on Thursday, November 11, 2010.   It is put together by the library foundation. Tickets are $50.  The foundation raised $20,000 for the childrens room last year.  Hopefully, they will do better this year.  In addition, there is the donation form on the library website.  But, it probably will not be enough. 

It would be nice to see a larger donor step up to the plate and for corporate sponsorship to happen as well.  We have had the Women's Enterprise Development Center, the African American Chamber of Commerce, members of the Chamber of Commerce come in to do programming, and will soon have SCORE counseling.  We also plan on working on a separate small business collection.

I spent some time looking for leads early in the year for prospects and the library recently updated our email list by over a thousand people.  It might help a little bit.

It leads me to thinking about my own future.  I have to consider different options.  The economy is in fairly bad shape. I'll probably be going to Thinking Outside the Library: Non-traditional Careers for Information Professionals  http://mysite.pratt.edu/~sla/ .  There are other programs as well.

My watch band broke so I had to go and get it fixed. I took the bus downtown because it is very hard to find parking without paying. I read some more of The Story of Stuff. She is describing problems of countries which rely on mining, oil, and other extractive resources. Because these pay for the government and the citizens often don't, there are problems. It is interesting enough. Once again, though, she annoyed me by saying we could just use wind and solar to power our future. Wind, solar, solar towers and concentrators, biodiesel and other biofuels, geothermal, run of the river hydroelectric, wave generators like pelamis, waste to energy like plasma gasification, highly energy efficient devices, and advanced energy storage devices like flywheel energy storage together might completely power our future but not just wind and solar.

Daily Thoughts 10/29/2010 (Business Books, The Story of Stuff)

Interior with poppies and reading woman (Lizzy Hohlenberg), 1905, Oil On Canvas, by Anna Ancher, Skagens Museum

Daily Thoughts 10/29/2010

This morning, I started reading The Story of Stuff How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health by Annie Leonard.  It is very much an environmentalist and anti-consumerist book.  It follows the path of our stuff from when it is made to when we use it to when we throw it away to when it ends in the dump.

This morning we talked about possibly merchandising (creating a separate collection) for the small business books.  I am looking at the Gaylord catalog which is a label catalog for business labels.  We also talked a bit about business dvds.

I did a little bit of weeding in the oversize books and a bit of shelf reading in the 800s.

In the New York Times book review, one book caught my attention; The Gun, The AK-47 and the Evolution of War by C.J. Chivers. 

On the way home, I read some more of The Story of Stuff.  The author is using a lot of liberal causes in her writing.  It feels very politically correct which can be annoying at times.  However, the sympathy there seems to be right.  I am not sure that I agree with everything she is saying.  I am reading this book because it is printed on recycled paper.  Ecolibris is doing a campaign to get people to read books printed on recycled paper.

Web Bits

All Hallow's Read http://www.allhallowsread.com/

If you get a chance take a look at the New York Librarians Meetup blog, it is well worth going to their events.  http://nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com/