The Trouble with Stuff

Let's do a little exercise, ok? This will be fun!

I want you to look around your house and pick one object. It can be anything. A roll of tape, perhaps? A glass of water? A lamp? Just pick something and really look at it.

Where did it come from?

Think about that for a minute. At some point, everything that your item is made of was a part of the earth. My lamp's shade is made of a papery substance, which probably came from a tree, or perhaps cotton. It's printed with a pattern. Where did the ink come from? What person or machine put the pattern on the shade? How about the glue that holds it in a funnel shape? Where did the metal wiring in the shade come from, or the metal base? What processes did the raw ore have to go through before it finally became wire and a lamp base? What about the electrical wiring? The plastic cord cover? The plastic piece that holds the light bulb? The bulb itself - where did the glass come from? The filament? What machine put it together, and how? How far did each part travel from beginning to end? How much waste and carbon dioxide was created in the process?

Wow! Overwhelming, huh? Now stop staring at your item, and pan back. Look at your whole room. Now your whole home. Everything in there has a story. Most of it has probably traveled thousands of miles and had a notable environmental impact on its way here. It has used up many resources and produced great quantities of pollution.

What seems craziest to me is to look around and think about the fact that for almost every item in my home, there is a factory somewhere. A huge, loud, oil-guzzling, carbon-belching factory. Sobering, isn't it?

Okay, exercise over.

Let's talk.

How should we react to this? Well, the first and biggest step is to think. We spend so much time ignoring the harm that we are doing as individuals. We don't have to look at the factories or watch the rain forests disappear, so it's easy to forget that what we do - and what we buy - makes a difference on a day-to-day basis. Becoming aware of your influence on our world is a huge step on the path to becoming an environmentally conscious person.

So the next time you want something new, stop and think about where it came from. Really think about it. Just because it's from a dollar store doesn't mean it only costs a dollar. What environmental costs were involved? Is it still a good deal?

Are you already doing this? How have your spending habits changed? Any tips? I'd love to hear your comments!

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The Trouble with Stuff

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