Video: The Story of Stuff

Photo courtesy <a href="http://storyofstuff.com/">The Story of Stuff</a>.

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


The inconvenient truth about the Inconvenient Truth approach to green pedagogy is that by the time Gore moves past the gloom to What You Can Do, you’re too depressed to do more than clutch the nearest stuffed penguin and click on Animal Planet. Not so Annie Leonard‘s 20-minute Story of Stuff viral kiddie video, an adorable, doomtastic, animated homage to How We’re All Killing the Planet (with cuteness and plastic bottles, mainly).

Watch the video below, then pass it on to a teacher you know along with our Waste Not, Want Not special report on the full story of Stuff.

From NYT:

The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air…

Mark Lukach, who teaches global studies at Woodside Priory, a Catholic college-preparatory school in Portola Valley, Calif., acknowledged that the film is edgy, but said the 20-minute length gives students time to challenge it in class after viewing it.

“Compared to ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ ” he said, referring to Al Gore’s one-and-a-half-hour documentary on climate change, “it is much shorter and easier to compact into a class segment. You can watch it and then segue into a discussion.”

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

INDEPENDENT. BECAUSE OF YOU.

Mother Jones has no billionaires calling the shots—just readers like you making fearless reporting possible

Donate