The Story of Stuff

Something I watched a long time ago, and had an opportunity to watch again - "The Story of Stuff"
The Story of Stuff

The world is growing at a rapid pace. The growing population demands goods at an exponential rate. This results in increasing consumerism. However, the issue of consumerism is larger than this. According to the "Story of Stuff", consumerism was a ploy developed by the capitalists in consonance with Governments in the early fifties, after the end of the Second World War, in order to increase the usage of consumer goods and products. This was achieved by planned and perceived obsolescence of products. 

The present product lifecycle as demonstrated in the video is shown to follow a linear path with the highlight being on Consumption. Advertising plays a huge role in propagating this agenda. This is a Myth, as nearly 99% of the products produced & bought in the US alone, are thrown into the dumps within 6 months. Worse is the damage being done to Earth, the environment and the human race (especially the poor) in the entire process, right from mining for resources, unclean production processes, unfair production and retail processes and finally unhygienic disposal. Recycling does not really help as it only looks at the problem down the product lifecycle where as the introduction of the toxins and waste happen much higher up the production cycle. 

I believe, what is required in the creation of new products today is a holistic and sustainable approach – a sensitized cyclic path, which takes into consideration the limits of earth’s resources, is equitable in its approach and is clean and wholesome and not wasteful. It should produce to meet the needs of the people and not the greed of the people. There is a need for new methods to be developed to ensure products are longer lasting, eco-friendly, non-toxic and biodegradable. Most important of all, reverse processes of 'planned and perceived obsolescence of products' have to be created and people need to be educated.