Tonight I went to the US Premiere of The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It’s a fabulous educational video about stuff. It’s important to examine where stuff comes from and where it goes and all of the seen and unseen pieces in-between and this video short does a great job of outlining the process. The Story of Stuff website has numerous resources, including some generic educational materials, drop down menus for the different aspects of the production-consumption cycle and a well documented source list for the facts sited. Share the video with your students, colleagues and friends. We’re watching it tomorrow in my classroom. I was thinking about also showing the artwork of Chris Jordan and his collection called Intolerable Beauty. If you haven’t seen his stuff, I highly recommend it.
The project is the result of a collaboration between the Tides Foundation, GAIA, Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Free Range Graphics. My dear friend Erica Priggen works for Free Range Graphics and was the Producer of the video. Great work Erica and all of the people who worked to make The Story of Stuff!
Here is a fun educational video from the folks at Free Range Graphics to launch a discussion about biodiversity in your class. You may recognize the plot from the DaVinci Code. If you’d like to share the video with your class, you may want to download it since YouTube is blocked at most schools. Here are instructions on how to download educational YouTube videos.
Resources You Can Use
A book I highly recommend is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The story line is a bit odd, a gorilla acting as a teacher, but the content and the vision are profound.
Before reading Ishmael I was wondering, “How can we be complacent about destroying our environment? This is maddness!” I now understand how that is possible. When I read the book it was like watching a huge jigsaw puzzle being assembled, and when the picture came into view it was life transforming. The book provides a clear alternative to destroying our environment and a new, expansive vision for humanity.
NOTE: Free Range Graphics only works with socially responsible companies. They rely on people sharing the videos with others to promote important messages. Please email it to friends and colleagues who will enjoy it.
A friend of mine from 5 Rhythms dance, Erica Priggen, told me about this hilarious video that she worked on with the folks at Free Range Graphics called “The Mouth Revolution.” You’ll understand the unusual title when you see it. He!He!
Share the video with a friend. Free Range Graphics only works with socially responsible groups who are promoting an important message. They rely on word of mouth to spread the “Mouth Revolution.” Viva la Moutholution!
If you like this video, you’ll love some of Free Range Graphics other videos, such as “Store Wars” and “The Meatrix.” I have a few of them posted on my Ecological Footprint Education Site.
We all leave footprints in the sand, the question is, will we be a big heal, or a great soul.
‘Tis the holiday season for many of us. What choices will you make when it comes to the ecological footprint you place on the planet? Why not create a healthy footprint for yours and future generations! (This is a post from my class blog and I wanted to share it with you so that you can share it with your own family and students.)
First off, you may be asking, “What is an ecological footprint?” According to Wikipedia’s definition, “an ecological footprint is a metaphor used to depict the amount of land and water area a human population would hypothetically need to provide the resources required to support itself and to absorb its wastes.”
Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz to see how much resources you use. I hope you’re sitting down when you take it. It’s quite intense to hear the amount of resources we as Americans use. I also recommend you take the quiz pretending you are from another country. You’ll be flabbergasted at the difference!
Things to Consider About Sustainability and Your Footprint
1. When you buy something, it must last as long or longer than it takes to make the raw ingredients to be sustainable.
Water bottles: A plastic water bottle, which is made of petroleum, takes millions of years to create. Yet we throw it away after an hour.
millions of years to make > 1 hour to drink NOT sustainable
Jeans: Jeans are made from cotton, which takes less than a year to grow.
less than a year to grow < wear jeans for more than a year Sustainable
2. Packaging is a huge waste of natural resources. Buy things with a minimum amount of packaging. Also bring your own bags to the store. If it’s a small purchase, ask that they don’t put it in a bag.
Holiday Suggestions from My Family to Yours
My family used to do several things that I’d like to share with you to help you be more environmentally conscientious.
First, we often wrapped gifts in the comic section of the paper. It was fun and colorful, and we all agreed that it was an easy step we could all take for the planet.
We also had boxes that had tops and bottoms. The tops were wrapped in wrapping paper and we used these boxes year after year… not to mention the bows. This year I received some gifts for my 40th birthday and they were in the boxes that I remember from when a kid. What a nice childhood memory!
Create attractive cards or gift tags that identify gifts that can be used year after year. For example, “From Mom & Dad, To Rebecca.” We had little felt gift tags that we made and we used them every year for Christmas. Think of all of the paper we saved, and it was a sweet thing to see those little tags. We still have them 35 years later!
Another cool thing that we did is that we didn’t have a Christmas tree. In 2002, over 20,000,000 trees were cut in the US alone by commercial farmers. And that’s just for the US! We had a Christmas branch instead. We cut some large limbs from trees that needed to be pruned and from the limbs we created a “tree.” Everyone always commented on how beautiful our trees looked. UC Berkeley School of Forestry has an annual sale of trees that have been cut from national parks that are potentially a fire hazard. If you celebrate Christmas, see if there is an alternative that suits your family’s needs and concerns when it comes to Christmas trees.
For more information on ecological footprints, check out this web quest.
This holiday think about the purchases you are making and the gifts you are requesting. What ecological footprint will you leave on the planet for your generation and future generations?
