38 pages • 1 hour read
Annie LeonardThe Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaChapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Production”
Production describes the processes that take all the different ingredients acquired through extraction. Production turns ingredients into Stuff. Chapter 1 describes the ingredients found in trees, water, and rocks. However, there is another important ingredient that is not found in nature: synthetic materials. Plastics, polyesters, ceramics, alloys, and polymers are examples of common synthetic materials. There are one hundred thousand synthetic compounds used in industrial production today. The risks of synthetic materials in terms of health impacts and environmental effects are largely unknown.
Leonard then turns to a few examples of synthetic materials. In each of her examples, the environmental cost of production is explored. She also looks at the impact on workers are underpaid, work in difficult conditions, and exposed to toxins. First, the cotton shirt. Cotton plants require a lot of water. Cotton is grown on industrial scale and only a few varieties are used. Irrigation wastes a lot of water through seepage and evaporation. Cotton uses 10% of the global supply of fertilizer and 25% of its insecticides at a cost of almost $2.6 billion in pesticides per year. Pesticides are hazardous and contain carcinogens. The chemicals in pesticides kill beneficial insects and microorganisms. Species develop resistances to pesticides. Other objects covered include books and computers.
Leonard argues that before buying something new, the cost and benefit must be clearly weighed. Borrowing and sharing objects is a better solution that buying new products. A list of questions to ask is included:
Were toxic ingredients used to make it? What was it like to be one of the factory workers who helped create it? Was any part of the production so distasteful that rich countries with higher standards refused to do it? (72).
Next, the chapter explores the answers to some of these questions. Dangerous materials include:
heavy metals mined from the earth, like lead, cadmium, arsenic, chromium, and mercury, alongside synthetic organic compounds, like the organochlorines (dioxin, DDT), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, used as a water repellant), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs, the flame retardants) (73).
Persistent Organic Pollutants are another warning sign. Every person’s body contains toxic chemicals that are the by-products of industrial processes. The workers who produce these products have the highest rates of exposure. The second highest rates of exposure in communities—called fence-line or host communities—surrounding production processes. In these communities, disease rates are higher and life expectancy is lower. There is a case study of a methyl isocyanate (MIC) leak at a Union Carbide Corporation factory in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984. The largest chemical industrial disaster in history, 8,000 people died immediately. The death toll is now over 20,000 people. Leonard concludes that rather than being an outlier, a disaster of this magnitude was unavoidable due to deregulation and the prioritization of profit over people.
The chapter concludes with an analysis of government regulation. Regulation is fragmented and insufficient. A revolution in how we produce Stuff is needed.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Distribution”
It is easy to access goods made on the other side of the world. In a couple of generations, distribution has rapidly expanded, and most things are available immediately. Distribution involves shipping via air, water and land. It requires roads, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and ports. It requires information technology systems. Economic globalization, international trade policies, and financial institutions shape how distribution moves Stuff globally.
Supply chains control how things are moved globally. Leonard cites Dara O’Rourke who suggests that a radical revolution in supply chain management occurred in the 21st century: lean manufacturing and lean retail. Lean manufacturing cuts all expenses that don’t add to the value of the product. Companies now market products, they don’t produce them. Production happens in factories that make products for different bands. They are only differentiated when they are branded. The brand who distributes the product becomes the most important factor in supply chains. Factories who produce the products have incentives to lower costs. This hurts workers and produces more environmental pollution. Lean retail also cuts costs where-ever possible by lowering salaries and benefits, working against union organizing, building stores in cheaper spaces, and eliminating inventory. This leads to increasingly casual labor and places pressure on workers.
Ninety-nine percent of overseas trade is shipped via shipping containers over water. Shipping consumers more than 140 million tons of fuel per year and contributes 23% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion globally. Thirty-five percent of the value of goods is shipped by air. There are signs of hope. The SmartWay Transport program run by the Environmental Protection Agency works with shippers to reduce the environmental impact of shipping.
To calculate the impact of shipping, Leonard studies companies who ship the objects discussed in Chapter 2—a white t-shirt from H&M, a book from Amazon.com, and a computer from Walmart. All of these stores rely on global networks to sell goods quickly and cheaply while maintaining a high turnover of new products. Leonard concludes that due to climate change and resource scarcity, shipping Stuff globally is unsustainable.
Trade agreements and international financial institutions (IFIs) is central to distribution. Leonard charts a short history of IFIs, focusing on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). These organizations set the rules of the global economy that prioritize the take-make-waste economic model. They have contributed to the imbalance of wealth as well as the destruction of the environment and communities globally. For example, people in Singrauli, India were removed from their land through “involuntary resettlement” (129) to make space for a coal fired power plant complex sponsored by the World Bank.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
Leonard provides guidance on making more informed, ethical choices. In Chapter 2, Leonard assesses “stupid Stuff”—products that are so toxic that the processes of production can’t be improved. Two examples are aluminum cans and polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC): Aluminum cans are one of the most energy-intensive, waste generating products on earth. Cans are produced from bauxite, an ore that is strip-mined. Mining displaces animals, people, and plants. Leonard details the different stages of the processes, showing the ingredients that aluminum production requires and the environmental costs of each. She concludes that only 45% of cans are actually recycled. Aluminum should stop being used to hold drinks, and the aluminum already in circulation should be recycled and used in industries that require the metal. Leonard suggests other actionable options, such as calling the customer service departments of industries that use PVCs. Companies are responding to consumer pressure, but government regulation is needed. Another solution is Freecycle, an online community where users give away objects they no longer need to reduce waste.
Leonard uses makeup as a case study. On average, American women use products with 168 chemical ingredients while men are exposed to 85 chemical ingredients per day. Even natural or organic products typically contain toxins. To demonstrate how toxins enter bodies, Leonard lists the toxins in her body. These include: Bisphenol A (BPA), Lead, Perflorinated compounds (PFCs), Triclosan, DDT, Chlordane, Mirex, Hexachlorobenzene, beta-hexachlorocyclohexane, Oxychlordane, t-Nonachlor, Heptachlor epoxide, Mercury, Deca-BDE. Next, Leonard looks at the toxins in breast milk, concluding that individual consumer choices are not enough to avoid chemicals. Rather, there must be reform and legislation. Reducing exposure is not enough. Toxins must be phased out. In Europe, there is more regulation and people are exposed to less hazardous materials.
In Chapter 2, Leonard analyzes how workers are exposed to hazardous materials. In doing so, she responds to the argument that environmental regulations kill jobs. By documenting the risks to workers, Leonard shows that the health of workers and the environment is mutually dependent. Increased regulation in factories in the United States has led to the exporting of toxic jobs abroad. Leonard also introduces environmental racism. In describing how some communities bear a disproportionate burden, Leonard highlights that toxic facilities are typically placed in low-income communities with a high percentage of people of color. For example, a 1987 report found that 60% of African Americans and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with toxic waste sites. The environmental justice movement emerged in the 1980s.
In Chapter 3, Leonard develops an analysis of the impact of corporations on communities and the climate. The prioritization of corporate profits makes unsustainable processes like global shipping necessary. The externalized costs to communities and ecosystems are too high. Leonard compares multinational corporations to colonizers. Corporate power is solidified by international financial institutions (IFIs) that make social, environmental, and labor standards secondary to promoting global trade. She writes that many people around the world “literally live at the very end of survival” (135) and pay the heaviest price for WTO, IMF, and World Bank policies. Leonard concludes that the problem isn’t the institutions themselves; the values that these organizations were built on are unsustainable and unjust. The paradigm that informs these organizations must change. For individual consumers, local alternatives are an important step to making change. Rather than books from Amazon.com, people can walk or bike to their local bookstore. This reinvests wealth into communities and promotes human connection.
