Category: Direct Action

The Story of Stuff

stuffThe Story of Stuff is a project by Annie Leonard that chronicles none other than stuff.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The best part – she provides information on how another way is possible!

Watch the movie The Story of Stuff.

Dangerous Ground Project Travels London WIthout Touching it

No More Landmines came up with a creative way to bring awareness to the danger of landmines around the world. The idea was to not touch the ground in London by using parkour, a way to move around using one’s body in the most efficient way possible. The fundraiser is one of the more creative ones that I’v eseen recently, and remember that £1 = 1 square meter of land.

Here’s a map of the route that they took:


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Find Your Lost (G)love

thanks AP!
A new website has the one goal of pairing up lost gloves with their owners. Losing your glove can make a happy day kinda sad, finding your lost glove can turn a sad day into a happy one.

Yahoo has an article on finding you lost gloves, and you can check the website at One Cold Hand.

Gooch, originally from Dallas, photographs each glove and puts the picture and information on her Web site, where people can report found gloves and request stickers. She hasn’t made any glove connections in the two weeks the site has been live, but it’s OK if that never happens, she said.

“It’s kind of whimsical and bittersweet,” Gooch said. “It makes you feel there’s this opportunity for benevolence.”

Gooch would love to see One Cold Hand projects sprout up in other cities. She’s working with two women in New York to start a similar effort there. They hope to have onecoldhand-nyc.com up and running soon.

Bible printed on FSC-Certified paper.

The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Daily Bible is printed on paper that includes recycled content and comes from forestlands certified by the Rainforest Alliance’s SmartWood program, the leading certifier of forestlands to FSC standards.

Kudos to Thomas Nelson, Domtar and Green Press Initiative for working together to achieve this important first in the publishing industry,” said Tensie Whelan, executive director of the Rainforest Alliance. “This is further evidence of the growing trend among publishers to improve their sourcing strategies and lessen their environmental impact by seeking out environmentally preferable papers.

Improve Your Self-Esteem and Save the Planet

Consumption in itself is bad for the planet, no matter how you cut it. Material things are generally made from finite resources (like how oil is made into plastic); so the less we buy the better we treat the planet.

This isn’t hard to do. In fact, it’s easier for people who have high self-esteem. Apprently, some new reseach is out that argues that the more confidence an individual has the less likely it is that they will buy material objects for comfort.

“By the time children reach early adolescence, and experience a decline in self-esteem, the stage is set for the use of material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth,” they write in the study, which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The paradox that findings such as these bring up, is that consumerism is good for the economy but bad for the individual. In the short run, it’s good for the economy when young people believe they need to buy an entirely new wardrobe every year, for example. But the hidden cost is much higher than the dollar amount. There are costs in happiness when people believe that their value is extrinsic. There are also environmental costs associated with widespread materialism.

I guess this can be further backed up by examples that billionaires don’t like spending their money.