Story of Stuff

Stuff moves through a cycle: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption, Disposal. Called the material's economy. System is linear. Cannot run a linear system on a finite planet forever. Clashing with world's limits.

System is missing people. Some people are more important than others, such as the government and the corporations. The corporations are larger than the government.
What's missing:
Extraction: We are running out of resources. In past three decades, one third of resources of planet are gone. US has 4 percent of forests left and 40% of water is undrinkable. US is using 30% of world's resources with only 5% of the world's population.
Production: Energy is used to mix resources with toxic chemicals to make toxic contaminated products. 100,000 synthetic chemicals used today, with 10% tested for health impacts and none tested for synergistic health impacts. Because of contaminants, human breast milk is the most contaminated food in the world. US admits to releasing about 4,000,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals annually.
Distribution: Goal is to keep inventory moving as fast as possible. Keep prices low. Skimp on employees. Externalized costs: we are not paying for the stuff we buy.
Consumption: US is nation of consumers. Only 1% of products that run through materials economy is trashed or not used within 6 months. Victor Lebow, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
Planned Obsolescence: Designed for the dump. They make stuff to be useless as quickly as possible.
Perceived Obsolescence: convinces us to discard products that are perfectly useful. Change the way stuff looks.
Advertisements play a huge role in this. 3,000 advertisements targeted at us a day.
Disposal: Each US citizen makes 4.5 pounds of waste daily. Either straight to landfill or burned and then sent to landfill. Incineration releases the toxins in the products. Dioxins are formed by incineration. These are super toxins. Some corporations export waste. Recycling reduces stress at both ends.
Recycling is not enough:
1. For every 1 garbage can of waste produced, there were 70 garbage cans produced to make that junk.
2. Much of the garbage cannot be recycled. Designed not to be recycled