Consuming Our Way to Unhappiness

Everywhere we turn lately, ads -- holiday, post-holiday, and year-end -- have been encouraging us to shop in a concerted and somewhat desperate effort to salvage the economy. But where does all the stuff we're buying actually come from?

Over the last few weeks I've received a number of emails encouraging me to watch The Story of Stuff, an online video that asks and answers that question. With amusing graphics and plenty of humor, host Annie Leonard delivers a complex analysis in an audience-friendly tone. It's produced by Free Range Studios, creators of The Meatrix, the wildly popular animated short about factory farming.

An expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, Annie Leonard has spent many years investigating factories and dumps around the world. She has worked with Health Care Without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International, and is currently coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.

Terrence McNally: How did The Story of Stuff happen? This is not the kind of work you've done before. What led you to this action?

Annie Leonard: I'm fortunate enough to have been able to spend literally 20 years visiting factories all over the world where our stuff is made as well as where our stuff is dumped. Doing that has given me a kind of social neurosis where I cannot hold an item without imagining its upstream and downstream life: where it came from and where it's going. Going through life in this way is actually incredibly illuminating, so I wanted other people to join me in ...

TM: -- In your neurosis!

AL: Yes exactly, so I would be less lonely.

I wanted other people to join me in thinking about where all this stuff in our life comes from, where it goes, and how we -- as well as communities on the other side of the world -- are paying a price for our excessive consumerism.

TM: Tell people a bit about it. First of all, how long is it?

AL: It's a 20-minute film, but really fast, I don't even take a breath.

TM: So it's not a two- or three-minute clip people can watch on impulse. Twenty minutes calls for a bit more commitment. How did you decide on the length and on the internet as the primary or initial venue?

AL: Yes, it's longer than a TV commercial, so it requires some actual interest in hearing about these issues. The film is based on an hour-long live presentation that we condensed. We chose to distribute it over the internet to disseminate it far and wide, and to allow people to see it for free. We knew that it would be more challenging to engage people online than in person, so we thought 20 minutes was a good compromise.

TM: What's the message?

AL: The message is a number of things. One, there's a cost to this excessive consumption. There's an environmental cost, there's a social cost -- and there's a personal happiness cost. This is what's really interesting. A lot of people think buying all this stuff is making us happier, but recent data has come out showing that it's not so. So we're trashing the planet, we're trashing communities -- and we're not even having fun. If we were at least having fun, we might want to reconsider. But it's not even fun anymore, so we need to rethink how we make, use and relate to the stuff in our lives.

TM: In the book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben pointed out that the happiest Americans have ever shown up on surveys was in the mid '50s, and that we are much less happy now. He concludes that our loss of community cannot be made up for by any gain in material goods. That's the U.S. -- is this a global phenomenon?

AL: It's increasingly global. We export our waste, we export our dirty technologies, but I'd say the most dangerous thing that we export is our way of living.

TM: This appetite.