Extraction: The Story of Stuff

Annie Leonard's chapter on extraction, or the process of removing resources from the earth to make all of our "stuff", offers an often-ignored perspective of the flaws in our culture of excess. For me personally, it's easier to think about the consequences of "stuff" in terms of steps further down the line - the pollution produced by the factory that makes a cell phone, the exploitative human labor used to craft that pair of running shoes.
As college age students I think we often take pride in being globally aware citizens, we know that we should buy organic food, try and avoid driving cars, recycle our containers, bring reusable bags to grocery stores, these all are all acts that I and I know many of my peers do frequently. Yet trying to find an environmentally, globally aware college student without a lap top, a cell phone, an i pod, and a number of other similar items would be hard to do. The corruption and human devastation behind the metals in these common and seemingly essential items are well hidden, probably due to corporate efforts to keep them so. It’s possible that the cell phone I was just talking to my parents on helped fuel conflicts in the Congo. This had never before cross my mind.
Leonard makes the point that such items are also designed to be short-lived, and our consumer society drives us to also want to get the newer, better version of things even when the older version is still function. I mean, who doesn't want the i phone 4? I think it’s important to understand the implications of owning so much “stuff”, and understanding the cost, not in a monetary sense, of the things go into making our “stuff”. This probably isn’t going to convince me to forgo a cell phone, but I’ll make sure I get all the life I can out of the one I have.

-Anna Dalton