In Part 2 of our special podcast accompanying The Story of Change, Annie talks with leading changemakers about how they do it. Hint: Start close to home, sharpen your citizen skills, and then take on the world

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Beth Terry
Kyle Thiermann
Eric Liu
Van Jones
Ralph Nader
Becky Tarbotton

_Learn More_
My Plastic-Free Life
Surfing for Change
Guiding Lights Network
Rebuild the Dream
Rainforest Action Network

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Episode 6: Don’t Just “Be the Change”- Make Change!

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This activity targets students in their 3rd or 4th year of high school French. It consists of:

• A French illustrated and simplified reading based on the French translation of The Story of Stuff
• A group activity to present a part of the reading on posters
• Directions for a gallery walk with those posters
• A worksheet for note-taking during the presentation
• Discussion questions

Thanks so much  to Anne B. for bringing The Story of Stuff into more classrooms!

We’d love to hear more about how other teachers use Story of Stuff in the classroom in the comments below. Also, if you have more curricula that you would like us to share with the Story of Stuff community, please email it to renee@storyofstuff.org, with a complete description.

Check out this awesome article from the New York Times about repair cafes  in Amsterdam.  Hup Holland hup!

Photo by: Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

I’m a total sucker for videos of people using their bodies to make shapes and words for aerial photography. Never gets old.

Check it out:

If you’re feeling particularly inspired, check out Resolutions Week and get involved with people all across the country who are getting together this summer to take a stand against the disastrous Citizens United decision.

Hat tip to Good Magazine for the post.

For holidays tainted by commercialism, Valentine’s Day gives Christmas a run for the money – big money. The National Retail Federation estimates Americans will spend $17.6 billion on Valentine’s gifts this year, including $4.1 billion on jewelry, $1.8 billion on flowers and $1.5 billion on candy. But for consumers with a conscience, the very things Madison Avenue markets as expressions of love are some of the worst stuff you can buy.

Chocolate: A heart-shaped box of truffles may be a sweet dream for chocolate lovers, but it’s a nightmare for many workers. Most of the world’s cocoa beans come from plantations in Ghana and Ivory Coast, where a 2010 BBC investigation exposed the widespread use of child labor, human trafficking and even slavery to harvest cocoa.

Flowers: Most roses and other flowers sold in the United States are imported from Colombia, where the cut flower industry is also known to use child workers and forced labor. Because the flowers have to look perfect, they’re treated with immense amounts of toxic pesticides, which contributes to high rates of lung and nerve disease in a workforce dominated by women and children.

Jewelry: Child labor, forced labor and dangerous conditions are well-documented in the mining industry. Gold mining uses mercury and cyanide to separate the metal from ore, and leaves behind mountains of toxic waste – more than 20 tons of waste to make one gold ring. The film Blood Diamonds dramatized the role that diamond mining plays in fueling and funding brutal wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola and other African nations that have killed and displaced millions of people.

So should you boycott Valentine’s Day? I’m not. I’m all for showing my loved ones how much I care, on Valentine’s Day tomorrow and every day. A hand-crafted card, a heartfelt note, a home-cooked meal or (ahem) a special favor are all ways to express your love. And for a gift that keeps on giving you can get involved in efforts to change the way these destructive industries do business. Joining a campaign not only amplifies your voice but brings you together with others who share your concerns.

Last February, Change.org mounted a petition drive that persuaded 1-800-Flowers to add Fair Trade-certified bouquets to its collection and create a code of conduct that prohibits its suppliers from using forced and child labor. Now the Fairness in Flowers campaign is asking consumers to write other major florists urging them to ensure their flowers are not grown and processed with the use of exploited labor or child labor.

More than 100,000 consumers have joined the No Dirty Gold campaign, which works to get jewelers to promise to use only gold mined responsibly. To date, 80 leading jewelry retailers worldwide have signed the pledge. Global Witness, a human rights group that helped bring attention to the bloody truth about the diamond trade, recently pulled out of a flawed United Nations-backed program to certify conflict-free diamonds, but remains active in the campaign to reform the industry.

OK, here’s the toughest one to pass by (at least for me) — chocolate. Global Exchange is among the groupsworking with schools, churches and community groups to get leading chocolate companies to promise that their sweet treats don’t exploit or endanger workers on African cocoa plantations.

Real love doesn’t trash the planet or force children to work in dangerous mines or pesticide-drenched fields. There’s no reason that jewelry, chocolates and flowers have to take such a heavy toll. This Valentine’s Day, let’s show our love not only to our sweethearts, friends and family, but to the Earth and people around the world.

Your emails, blog and FB comments, often serve as sparkly, internet reminders that all across the globe there are tons of people hard at work to make this world more healthy, sustainable, and just. Yay!

Just yesterday this note came in from our new friend Alex who was traveling in Ayacucho, Peru:

…[I] was delighted to come upon the scene in the attached photo, a youth environmental group screening ‘la historia de las cosas’ [The Story of Stuff] in public (on the side of a church no less, along a very heavily used pedestrian lane).

Apparently, the name of the group hosting the event was Allpanchikrayku which is a Quechua word for “For Our Earth.” Pretty freakin’ cool, right?!

I certainly feel less daunted about trying to change the world when I know that I’m part of a big, bold, awesome, international community.

What are you doing “for our earth” these days? Tell us about it!

PS. If you’re hosting a screening of any of “The Story of…” movies be sure to put it on our Community Screenings Map! 

by Allison Cook and Renée Shade

At the end of November, I immediately–and frantically–started making to-do lists of presents to buy, searching blogs for holiday meal and craft ideas, looking for cheap flights, and trying to remember where I put my glue gun. The overwhelming feeling of holiday craziness began to wash over me, and I’m not the only one freaking out; eight out of ten Americans experience increased stress during the holiday season.

I spend a huge part of every day at The Story of Stuff Project trying to engage a different kind of thinking about our relationship to stuff and our consumer-crazed culture. The irony of me crouching over my desk trying to determine the exactly perfect kind of toxic-laden, superfluous piece of junk to buy for the people who matter the most is not lost on me.
There is no denying that the stuff-focused frenzy of the holidays is a force to be reckoned with, but I’m a firm believer that it’s no match for what really makes the holidays so special: our family and friends, a sense of tradition and history, and a good bit of fun. My colleague, Renée, and I put our heads together to think up some ways that we can reclaim the holidays and celebrate traditions, new and old, which remind us and our families what’s so special about this time of year.

• Sing Out! Every year my family goes Christmas caroling, and it’s my absolute favorite part of the holiday. None of us are very good, but it’s silly and joyful and festive, and makes me feel connected to my family history. Caroling is something my mother’s family did back when she was a kid and my grandmother before that. Whether you’re singing in the streets, around the fire, with a choir or just about anywhere, music is a great way to share time together. Don’t like those holiday standards? Start a new tradition! Our family favorite is “Lean on Me” which last I checked is not a caroling classic!

• Give the Gift of Time: Time is one of the most precious gifts we can give to the people we hold dear. Giving time together reduces the amount of stress-inducing, useless stuff in everyone’s life, builds community and creates a fabulous catalog of memories to look back on. Renée gives her twin nephews the gift of time each Christmas in the form of a trip to the trampoline park or a day at the beach. For older children you can give a ticket to see a favorite band. And it’s not just for kids. How about making a certificate to babysit your best friend’s kids so they can enjoy a night on the town?

• Teach a Skill: There is a lot that you can learn from YouTube, but there is no substitution for real, hands-on instruction. Instead of heading to the mall to buy something, you can use this extra time to teach your kid how to make it themselves. Craft a special holiday decoration, teach them to knit or sew or (if you’re feeling ambitious) build a new toboggan to cruise around on that fresh winter snow.

• Get Cookin’: Renée and I both come from families that take food pretty seriously. Holidays are synonymous with food, and we love cooking with our families. Whether it’s a kid-friendly cookie recipefor a party or a family recipe handed down for generations, getting kids in the kitchen not only helps them hone new skills but is a great way to spend time together. In my family, each New Year’s Day we celebrate with “lucky foods,” a combination of traditional Pennsylvania Dutch classics like sauerkraut, and extended family favorites black-eyed peas, Mexican Buñuelos and a host of new recipes that make the start of a new year feel special.

What are your ideas for reclaiming the holidays and making this time of year about what you and your family truly values? We’d love to hear from you.

Here are just a couple of the reasons why:

Over the last decade, we’ve seen our country’s democracy and economy crumble before our very eyes. But in the midst of this still unfolding disaster, we’ve also seen a surge in public interest in making change in a way that many of us have never seen before. We want to help harness that energy to build a better future for all of us. And the fact is, we feel best equipped to do that here at home.

We also recognize that our country’s export of toxic waste, toxic products, toxic consumer-focused culture, and climate changing carbon disproportionately impact people in countries other than our own. We feel the best way to express our solidarity with impacted communities, both here and abroad, is to change the way our country operates.

Then there’s the simple fact that there are only six of us! So we partner globally with organizations like the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and others to support organizing in many other countries.

We’re happy to continue making The Story of Broke and our other movies and materials available to anyone around the world. We’ll do everything we can to keep them free to use, share, and show and, with all our movies, we always have our international community in mind.

We share what we know through our movies. We’d love our international friends to share what you know and what The Story of Broke looks like in your country. We encourage you to supplement the movie with materials that speak to the specific reality in your country. Maybe invite a guest speaker to a screening or post it on a website with a explanation of what’s happening near you. Please feel free to share your stories, resources, names organizations you support and questions below as comments. You can also take a look atWiserEarth to find out who’s working on these issues in your community.

And one last thing, if you have a friend in the states, please consider forwarding our emails on to them so they can get involved!

Thank you for all you do to help build a better world. Remember, we’re all in this together.

If you think schools should be supplementing reading, writing and arithmetic lessons with some schooling on those other three r’s – reducing, reusing and recycling – the Story of Stuff Project has some great resources for you, your kids and their teachers.

For high school teachers and students we collaborated with Facing the Future to create Buy, Use, Toss: A Closer Look at the Things We Buy , a free two-week curriculum that includes ten, fully planned lessons aligned with national science and social studies standards.

You can download this incredible learning resource at Facing the Future’s website, where it’s already become a smash hit.

For the younger set, Annie Leonard worked with WGBH-Boston and PBS Kids to develop Loop Scoops, a series of fun 2-minute videos that help get kids thinking about the Stuff in their lives. Things like: What is this made of? Where did it come from? Who made it? And what happens when I throw it away?

Check out the videos, share them with your kids and pass them along to their teachers for use in the classroom.

For the life-long learners among us, we recently released a companion Reading Guide for The Story of Stuff book, which is now available in paperback in the U.S. and in more than 10 languages.

This free Guide includes discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Annie Leonard. Grab a copy of the book from your library – or buy one from a local bookseller – and then download the reading guide from our site.

And, of course, you can always view, download and share all of The Story of Stuff Project movies on our website, including the original Story of Stuff, which The New York Times called “a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.”

We hope you use, enjoy and share these resources widely. After all, rewriting the story of stuff is going to take many hands, including those just grasping a pencil for the first time!

Sincerely,

Annie, Michael, Allison, Christina & Renee
The Story of Stuff Project Team

P.S. For more information about how to green your school, check out our friends at the Green Schools Initiative, who have mobilized to improve the environmental health and ecological sustainability of American schools.