Annie Leonardo’s videos and books are internationally controversial being called “an anti-consumerism diatribe” and even “community college Marxism in a ponytail.” This negative critic is due to she realistically portrays our negative way of living.
This clip enlightens us on the material economy process; the extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal of consumer goods, forcing us to realise the social and environmental impacts of the way we are using this process but all so showing us the alternatives to this devastating process.
Annie Leonardo points out that “you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely”; in other words to ensure the world stays inhabitable we cannot extract natural resources at an incredible high rate to produce disposable products through a process which has a huge toxic output.
The clip enlightens us on how companies use a products obselence to influence a higher consumer consumption rate. They either use;
-those that are made to have poor durability
-those companies which readily produce new editions to the product and the consumer feels like they need the new version eg apple ipods are a perfect example of this as a new generation is brought onto the market yearly, the difference between new and old being predominantly in the aesthetics.
Leonardo further goes onto portray that the Americans unstable economy relies on this high consumption rate to stay afloat, as seen in cases such as the nine eleven bombings where people were in a state of devastation and stopped buying goods George bush told the population to SHOP. It’s a continual circle of spend money shopping- work to pay debts-spend money shopping ect this life cycle leaves the population having the smallest amount of leisure time in history. This means no down time to indulge in family and friend relationships which impacts greatly on their happiness. Besides from the social impacts of this process the environmental consequences will be fatal to our planet, for example;
· We lose 50,000 acres of trees a day globally to deforestation for the making of our paper, furniture, houses etc.
· In the U.S., each person uses 200 gallons of water on their lawns per day during the growing season.
· It takes 256 gallons of water to produce a single cotton t-shirt.
· The average gold wedding ring creates about 20 tons of hazardous waste
In conclusion she expresses her view that it is great that there are many activists focusing on a small part of the consumer goods lifecycle (e.g. fighting strip mining, hazardous waste disposal, or wasteful transportation of goods). However to make a real change Leonard believes activist in extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal areas need to come together. Although each area can stand alone; each is part of a greater system which must be carefully considered in order to maximize the design’s usability, efficiency, and sustainability.
As a designer this clip made me realize I must not only associate with people from production but all these areas; to truly make a positive impact we must come together to bring around the most successful solutions to the terrible problems our kind has created.
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