Do you own your life or does your life own you?

“Any half-awake materialist well knows – that which you hold holds you.”

-Tom Robbins

Image: electricnerve

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Tips for traveling light (stylishly) wherever you may roam.

Anyone who has ever tried to haul oversize suitcases along city streets, onto buses and trains, or up the stairs of a subway platform is well acquainted with the less glamorous side of travel. There are the sweat-stains, the fear of being mugged whilst carrying everything you own, the inopportune dropping of documents, and the desperate search for somebody, anybody, to help you carry your baggage up the stairs.

You’ll often hear globetrotters extol the benefits of packing light, priding themselves on the ability to pack only a modest carry on, whether going away for three days or three weeks.

Recently, I’ve come to realize the benefits not only of packing light, but of living light as well. For the past eight months, through different seasons, continents and hemispheres, I’ve lived only with the contents of my trusty Samsonite bag. Other than the few boxes of sentimental paraphernalia currently gathering dust at my parents’ house, I have little else in the way of worldly possessions.

My stint of extended suitcase living – of which there is no end in sight for the foreseeable future – has been a liberating exercise. At home, I’ve always struggled to minimize my belongings, donate the things I don’t need, and only make conscious purchases. On the road, those practices have effortlessly become a requirement of my existence.

While lugging all your belongings on your back is an impressive demonstration of minimalism, it’s a slightly less challenging one when it’s completely acceptable to look, well, like a seasoned backpacker.

Instead, I have appeared to the outside world as a stable member of society, rather than the quasi-transient one that I actually am. Meetings, interviews, weddings, and dinner parties have all been attended in appropriate and stylish, dress. The best part about this has been proving to myself that living with this kind of simplicity is not only possible, it’s preferred. And somehow, my life seems richer for it.

Shopping is rarely on the list of priorities these days, which is a boon for my bank account. When I do buy something, it’s usually of a higher quality, because I buy things less often. The house wares section of stores – the part that sells things like salad bowls, plush bath towels and scented candles – seems humorously irrelevant to me. In short, when the weight of your material possessions can’t exceed 23 kg, it leaves a whole lot of room for everything else in life.

With that said, there are a few tricks to mastering this spartan sense of style. Fortunately, none of them involve Teva sandles or convertible pants.

• Find a good blazer– a fitted jacket can make even the simplest outfit look sharp. A black or navy blazer does triple duty – wear it to a meeting, over a cocktail dress, or with jeans and a t-shirt on a long flight – and no one will suspect you have no permanent address.
• Don’t get attached- Each time I’m about to move on to a new place, I take careful stock of what I’m actually going to use while there. When I realized I probably wasn’t going to need a pair of chunky (and heavy) platforms while exploring Asia and Africa, my roommate in London happily took them off my hands. It’s important to get rid of stuff responsibly though – don’t just throw it away. There are almost always local charity shops, thrift stores, or perhaps even some appreciative locals who might be happy to acquire some of your stuff.
• Neutral, but not boring- Any list of packing tips will stress packing with a neutral color pallet in mind. While this is certainly a prudent tip, dressing in heather gray, beige and black can get pretty boring when you’re doing it for months at a time. I like to collect colorful scarves and sarongs when I’m traveling – my favorite piece being a green patterned sarong I bought on a beach in Kenya – because they add interest to outfits, can be worn in multiple ways, and don’t weigh much. I also try to keep the weight of fabrics in mind: heavy knits like sweaters or denim should be neutral, because they’re worn the most, while color can be added with light items like linen sun dresses and silk tops.
• Think about what you’re accumulating– When you’re traveling or living in new places, it’s natural to want to buy stuff. But the weight of those funky wooden beads you bought from the street hawker or those quirky vintage tins you found in that antique market add up. I once watched a roommate pack and find she had accumulated three times the baggage weight allowance for her flight back to Brazil. Don’t think that just because something is cheap and novel that it’s worth buying.

To be fair, there is some sacrifice involved in suitcase living, missing my French press coffee maker and wishing I had a bicycle are two. However, I’ve found in recent months that what I’m lacking in stuff, I more than make up for in the experiences I’m accumulating.

Luckily, I don’t think the airlines will be limiting the weight of those anytime soon.

Flickr: kthread

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Annie Leonard talks about the path to a healthy community, taking back our democracy and the three things that make people happy.

Annie Leonard has spent twenty years investigating where our stuff comes from, how we use it and where it goes. She is the creator of The Story of Stuff project, a series of films that discuss democracy, water bottles, cap and trade, electronics and cosmetics. She has traveled to 40 countries and visited hundreds of factories and dumps. Leonard has observed the effects of over and under-consumption all over the world, and is dedicated to building a clean, green, healthy, safe community for everyone.

We caught up with her recently to talk about how the Staten Island dump, Pacific Northwestern clear cuts and planned obsolescence helped fuel the passion that is now her career.

How did you start down this road of activism? What influenced you and when?

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and I went camping a lot as a kid. I loved the feeling of being in forests. There was something about it that felt so grounded and so good. So, when I saw these vicious, huge clear cuts, I remember feeling that something is wrong, so I planned to be a forest activist when I grew up. I went to college in New York City, which is a funny place to go to be a forest activist, but it turned out to be really smart.

I would walk to school every day, and there would be these huge, literally shoulder-high, piles of garbage. And I started wondering, what was in all those bags? So I started looking in garbage and I was amazed to see that it was almost all paper. My beloved forests are being chopped down to be made into paper, and the paper is going into the garbage, but where does it go afterward? So I took a field trip to the dump on Staten Island where New York City’s garbage goes. I really recommend everyone go visit the dump. It’s a fascinating thing to see the back end of where all our stuff comes out.

I’ll never forget this moment. I stood there as a sophomore in college looking out at this pile of waste. As far as I could see there were shoes and appliances and books and food and everything you could imagine, and I thought, “My God, we have a real problem. We have built our economy on the unsustainable flow of materials from resources to waste.”

So I decided to figure it out. I studied garbage and waste management in school. I went to Washington DC, worked for environmental groups and spent the next twenty years traveling around the world visiting factories where our stuff is made, visiting dumps, and interviewing people about toxins and chemicals and pollution and garbage and consumption and figuring out how to put the pieces together to understand what was going on. And that’s what I summarized in The Story of Stuff film and book.

When did you create The Story of Stuff and what was your goal?

For about ten years, I had been practicing different ways of talking about where our stuff comes from and where it goes, and I was finding that the more that I learned about it and the more my expertise grew, the less I could communicate with people in a way that they found accessible and relevant.

I tried to figure out if there was a way we could talk about environmental issues that’s fun and easy and welcoming and not all science, charts and graphs, and not all about guilt and fear and shame. Guilt and fear and shame are not powerful places to hang out, yet so many environmentalists bombard the public with those things.

So I developed this talk and turned it into The Story of Stuff film. I must have given that talk a hundred times, and every time, someone would say, can you make a movie of this? So, after three years of resisting, I did the talk one last time and a friend of mine filmed it. We took the film to Free Range Studios, who are these absolute geniuses at capturing different issues in these do-gooder films online.

We put it online free in December 2007. Our goal – our dream – was that 50,000 people would watch it. We thought if we could get 50,000 people to watch this film, then we could really get people talking about this stuff. To our utter amazement, we got 50,000 people in one day. We are now at over 12 million views of the original film and we’ve made additional films and now we’ve had 20 million views total. All of our films are these short, fun films that look at really serious issues about what’s wrong with our materials economy.

I have been so excited about the response, because these are difficult issues to talk about, everything from planned obsolescence (where product designers make stuff designed to break) to corporate influence in democracy. We’ve found a fun way to talk about it and people are watching and having these amazing conversations all over the world. The films have been watched in over 200 countries, shown in schools and churches and synagogues and festivals and conferences – it’s so cool to see all the ways people are using them to spark much-needed conversation.

Where do your ideas for topics come from?

I have been looking at how we make, use and throw away stuff for a long time, so I have lots of things I’d love to talk to people about, but first we pick issues we feel are big chunks of the problem, things we need to be talking about. We also pick things that tend to be technical or there’s just not a lot of discussion about it – things like manufactured demand or planned obsolescence or corporate hijacking of our democracy. We also focus on what our viewers want to hear. We get hundreds and hundreds of emails every week and I really like to get a sense of what people really want to understand more about.

I would talk about how it is absolutely possible to build a safe, healthy, fair society – I am absolutely convinced of it. The technology exists, the research exists, we absolutely could do it, but people would raise their hands and say, yes, but we can’t because we are butting up against the coal industry and the oil industry and corporations have too much control of Congress and we can’t get good laws passed because corporations get mad. So we made a film about corporate power and some steps we can take to reign in corporate power in our democracy so we can take our democracy back.

Our next film is called The Story of Broke. Wherever I go and talk about how we can make a safe, healthy, fair and fun society, people write back and say, “There’s no money for that. It’s a nice idea, safe products and clean energy – but there’s no money for that.” But the truth is – there IS money for it. There’s a lot of money for it. It’s actually our money, because it’s our government and we’re giving that money right now to nuclear reactors, loan guarantees, and enormous subsidies for incredibly profitable oil and gas companies. So we should get involved with what’s happening to it. And right now it’s being used to prop up the dinosaur economy and what we should use it for instead is to build a healthy, fair future.

We have more ideas and requests that we can possibly do. We want to watch the response to each film and pay attention to what’s happening in society, and we really want to respond to our viewers. We’re trying to provide the information that they need to engage in the conversation. One of the things we definitely want to look at in one of the next couple of films is solutions. We want to really focus on how many solutions are out there – there are so many, it’s just incredible how possible it is to make clean, green, safe, healthy stuff.

What direct impact has The Story of Stuff had?

It’s interesting with online work is that you don’t really know what direct impact it has really had. Part of what we do know is anecdotal. We hear lots and lots of stories from people who say, “I never thought about where our stuff comes from and where it goes until I saw your films. And because of that film, I am rethinking the role of stuff in my life. I am looking for ways to buy stuff used, to share things, to find happiness through other ways than going shopping.” Thousands and thousands of incredibly heartwarming stories like that make us really happy.

We can track how many people watch it online and people have watched it in every single country except one in the middle of Africa. We can track what resources they download and those materials have been downloaded tens of thousands of times. So we absolutely know that we are contributing to thinking and talking about these issues. The only way we’ll really know if it’s working is if we can build up enough power in this country to demand a clean, green and healthy economy. Then we’ll know that we’ve won.

If you could tell everyone in the world (or just the U.S.) to make one change in their lives to make the biggest impact, what would it be?

I think if I could just pick one, what I would say is to develop the infrastructure and culture for sharing. There are lots of solutions to the problems we face that are very complex and technical, but there are also some that are very simple, and bringing back sharing is one.

As we’re in tough economic times and as we’re bumping up against the planet’s limits, we are going to have to learn how to live well with less stuff. It’s crazy in this country for EVERY single house to have a wheelbarrow, a power drill and a lawn mower and a cupcake tin and all these things that you only use a few times a year. So if we share, it means we have to mine less metals, cut less trees, we can make our resources go further if one lawn mower or power drill can serve six families instead of just one.

Perhaps the most important part of sharing is that it’s better for our happiness. Because if you’re going to share something, you have to talk to people, you have to have friends, you have to have community. And the more we can develop friends and community and get out of our social isolation that this country is experiencing, the less we’re going to feel the need to go out and go shopping because we can find fun and meaning in our sense of community. It’s better for the planet, better for our economy, and way more fun.

Speaking of possessions, what is your most cherished possession?

You know what I really love? I love my clothesline. Because I’m often so busy, having a clothesline in my backyard makes me pause twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon, to just spend ten minutes standing in my garden. It makes me feel connected to the natural environment because the sun is drying my clothes. It just makes me slow down and take a breath and just have a moment to reflect on my day and have gratitude for all that I have. When I travel, I even take a little clothesline with me.

Who are your real-life heroes?

People often ask how I remain so hopeful and it’s because there are so many people helping to make the world better in so many ways. But for me, the real heroes are the everyday moms who are just trying to get dinner on the table and get their kids to do well in school, who are standing up and taking a stand against corporate polluters. People like Lois Gibbs. She was the mother at Love Canal (a town near Niagra Falls, New York).

For decades, a chemical company had poured their toxic waste into a canal and covered it up with dirt. Then they sold it to a school district for some nominal fee. Lois Gibbs and the other moms began noticing a very high rate of rare and very serious diseases, a lot of miscarriages, and kids getting really sick. She figured it out, about this toxic waste that was seeping into the school as well as into a bunch of the basements in this town.

She was a mom without a college degree in any of these issues, and no scientific training. She started putting together the data and faced enormous ostracism from the community. She risked threats of violence and she still demanded that the government come and clean up the mess, and move the people out of there whose houses were built on this toxic waste site.

It’s people like that, who, when life is hard enough, are able to still find the strength to stand up to the forces against us, and demand something better. They inspire me so much. I just feel like if they can do it, I can certainly do it.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

Two things. I am very proud that The Story of Stuff has been so well-received. I am enormously happy that we figured out a way to talk about complex issues in a fun way.

I am also happy about how I have been able to integrate many of the lessons I’ve learned into my own life. So that my life, while far from perfect, has been made better by changes I’ve made because of the things I’ve learned from doing this research. For example, there are six households on my block that are very, very good friends and we share everything from childcare to cutting each other’s hair to a pickup truck.

When people ask me how do I know sharing and having community is better than having massive credit card debit and going to the mall, I know because I live it. I can speak with a real authenticity, that sharing, that taking meaning through community and making the world better is just way more fun than being on this hyper-consumption, consumer mania treadmill. I’m happy with my work and I’m happy with my community.

I watched Citizens United v. FEC. It is particularly relevant since we are facing an election in the next year. Do you think that people will stand up and demand change, or are they so discouraged that they won’t try, and no change will happen for a long time?

I think, both. I think people are already starting to speak up, like this amazing protest in front of the White House last month about the Tar Sands pipeline. I watched it feeling so hopeful, because they weren’t just Greenpeacers and Rainforest Action Network types, there were people who said they never attended a protest before, but they just couldn’t take it any longer. They realized that corporations all over Capitol Hill are making their voices heard, and if we are going to make our voices heard, it is time for really dire action. I saw one interview with a rancher who said he’d just had it with the government’s inability to act on climate change. I saw a grandmother from Texas. It was just so inspiring to see regular folks saying “I’ve just had enough. I’m ready to put my body on the line to have my concern for the climate be heard.”

I feel very hopeful about that kind of things that’s happening all over the world – people getting involved. I also think people are frustrated, especially after this last presidential election when people volunteered and donated money and knocked on doors and did all this work for change, and there hasn’t been enough change. And so I’m worried that people are going to choose to check out of the political process and I appeal to them – this is NOT the time to do that. The most important battle that we will ever face in our lifetime is wrestling back our democracy from the corporate interests. We have got to stay engaged, we have got to not hand over our democracy.

We have to really encourage people we know to get involved in making our voices heard. It is absolutely true that these super-rich, big companies are controlling the dialogue right now, but there are more of us, than of them. So every day that we do not voice our opinions, we’re actually voting for the status quo to continue. We’ve simply got to engage.

This country is way too incredible and wonderful and valuable to just hand off to people who don’t actually care about it. So we need to take our country back. And then, once we’ve done that, we can deal with the kinds of issues that I talked about in The Story of Stuff. We can make our products safe and our schools good and our environment clean. But we’ve got to get the power so our government is working for us, instead of the big companies.

What is your idea of true happiness?

It’s hard for me to separate my own ideas and thoughts from all the data that I’ve read. I’ve done a huge amount of looking into what actually makes people happy. I was very interested in the fact that we have more, better, cooler stuff than at any time throughout history, but our happiness levels are actually going down.

It turns out that there are three things that make people happy. The first one is the quality of our social relationships and having friends and family and community. The second thing is having leisure time and not working around the clock. We work so many hours in this country. We work about 300 hours more per year than our counterparts in Europe do. So we’re exhausted and socially isolated. The third big one is having meaning in life.

That resonated so much with me. For me, true happiness is if everyone on the whole planet has those things. A healthy, strong community, some leisure time, so we can invest in art, in community, in family, the environment, civic activities, and having a purpose in life.

Visit The Story of Stuff to view the videos and be notified about new topics.

Images: The Story of Stuff Project

The post The Story of Stuff: A Conversation with Annie Leonard appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

The stock market is on a roller coaster, financial oligarch Warren Buffet is calling for all the other financial oligarchs to get real, and everyone has been holding their breath about Greece. Such are the times. We  would all do well to tighten our belts and remember that life isn’t about material things.

Unless you’re in a Hollywood movie, that is. Tinsel Town is notorious for glamorizing materialism and consumption. A movie shopping montage can look as all-American cool as James Dean slouched over in a leather jacket. Today, James would now be entirely represented by Ryan Gosling’s six-pack abs.

Films and sitcoms have long been guilty of bumping up the characters’ environs a tax bracket or two beyond realistic. But in the current economic climate (not to mention climate climate), some films are particularly jarring – a rather sad retrospective on a society that’s consumed itself like some mythical Greek tragedy. Or, cinema is about fantasy and we’re no fun. Only our closets and bank accounts can decide. Herewith, the seven most materialistic movies to date:

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

This sequel behaved exactly like a feral puppy holding our favorite adolescent book in its mouth – it shook and snarled and shattered our happy memories of a fantastic HBO series until all that was left were sloppy, spit-soaked scraps on the floorboards. For many, this is what happened when Sex and the City was first brought to the big screen in 2008. For almost all, the 2010 sequel was the final nail in their gold-plated coffin.

The plot of this movie entailed taking our favorite female Manhattanites, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, and propping them against miles and miles of Gucci, Dior, and Prada. Our gang eventually heads to Saudi Arabia, only to find they aren’t so welcome in Islamic culture. But not to worry, Saudi women are fine. Underneath their Hijabs and Abayas are just more Gucci, Dior, and Prada. Can we say ridiculous, racist, and radically offensive consumerism? Yes, we can.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

It’s no secret we love Ryan Gosling. Nonetheless, his latest movie didn’t even bother to keep consumerism in check. The plot runs something like this: Gosling helps the old guy become cool, get girls and get laid by buying clothes. Don’t worry; he’s got a trust fund! And did we mention that old guy’s ex-wife lives in a sprawling home that is totally unrealistic for a middle class Los Angeles family? Yes, it’s 2011 and we’re still making these sorts of movies.

Pretty Woman (1990)

Evidently, what makes a great antidote to a soul-shattered life filled with prostitution, murder, and drug use is shopping on Rodeo Drive! Just make sure your “heart of gold” charms your John into leaving you with a credit card you can thumb in the noses of snobby Beverly Hills salesgirls. We acknowledge that Edward and Vivian rode off into the sunset together at the end of the movie, happily in love. After all, isn’t selling your body for money romantic? (We prefer to be called realists.)

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Marie Antoinette is not exactly known in history for her socially-conscious contributions to society. So a flashy, updated biopic on her life shouldn’t be expected to read like a remake of Gandhi. However, Sofia Coppola’s ill-fated French queen was compared to a modern day Paris Hilton. What gave critics that idea? Possibly the miles and miles of film focused on shoes, couture, hairstyles and more. Was it all bad? The film boasts an incredible soundtrack (New Order, anyone?) and is gorgeously shot against Versailles itself. Consumerism is made hip, cool, and pretty – and ultimately, deadly.

Clueless (1995)

Is it ironic that a film about materialism stars one of the Hollywood’s green darlings? As if! Cher, played by vocal vegan and PETA pin-up Alicia Silverstone, shops her way around this update of Jane Austen’s Emma. Problems are solved if only the right outfit can be found. In the end, our Cher-Emma-Alicia finds true love with her socially-conscious step-brother. So maybe this was just art imitating an eventual reality for the lovely Ms. Silverstone.

Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)

This film about a shopping addict who falls for a wealthy entrepreneur had the misfortune of debuting just after the dawn of the Great Recession. As one review wrote in 2009, “When P.J. Hogan’s out-of-step comedy was conceived, conspicuous consumption was the norm. Yet here we are, only nine months after the [first] Sex and the City movie and an obsessive spender with an overstuffed closet, and credit card bills to match, no longer seems quite so cute.”

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Set at Runway (aka Vogue) magazine, Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs finds her fight to the top is streamlined once she raids the hallowed halls of the magazine’s sample closet. We’re even treated to a montage of amazingly-styled outfits as Andy makes her way to work through the streets of New York City. (See? We’re not total shopping curmudgeons.)

But how did Andy justify the new wardrobe? There’s some lip service that she gets the clothes for free via Stanley Tucci’s benevolent godfather-style tutelage. But could a Conde Nast assistant ever afford such a wardrobe without a healthy bank account not possibly acquired solely as a Conde Nast assistant? Not likely. And did she really need it? Only in the minds of a Hollywood executive.

This is the latest installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade Grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

Image: zoonabar

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QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“We spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t last, on people we don’t care about.”

– Tim Jackson

Image: “Shopping – Despair” David Blackwell

The post Shopping appeared first on EcoSalon.

Shopping is an adrenaline rush. How else to explain the talking ceramic cat you had to have, or the face cream that you bought because it was guaranteed to return your skin to the hue it had in the womb? Sure, the Great Recession has shifted Americans’ shopping habits, but we’re still a spending force to be reckoned with. Luckily, there are things we just don’t need on this planet. So take a look at some items you might want to trim from your shopping list.

Microwave oven

I haven’t had a microwave since Clinton was in the White House. Sure, on occasion I’ll miss the opportunity to melt down butter without burning it on the stove. I’d just rather give the counter space to something more deserving, like cookies. Or cupcakes. Or brownies…

Electric wine bottle openers

Waiters can open a bottle of organic wine, at the table, with just a mere flick of a wrist and cork-screw. Mentally raising a cork out of the bottle with special brain powers would be cooler, but for now a simple corkscrew works fine. And gives good strength training!

Bread machines

Sure, bread machines can be an awesome way to get perfectly-shaped loaves of steamy, fresh bread. But allow us to face the delicious reality of fresh bread. If you’re taking the time to make fresh bread in your bread machine, you probably have the time to bake fresh bread in your oven. Hard realities, folks. Hard realities.

Neck creams

It’s become casual sport in Hollywood to guess an actress’ age by her neck, which still remains hard to control by Botox or a lift. So now there’s a whole industry of creams dedicated to the neck. In reality, you should just use the same creams and treatments on your neck as you do on your face. Moisturize tone, mask – just bring it down a few inches lower than your jaw line.

Beauty products tested on animals

To which we and super cute-bunny-that-fits-in-a-hand say – really? Products like said Botox are continually tested on animals with appalling results. There’s a whole world of products, beauty or otherwise, that are cruelty-free. You can find them here.

Hand sanitizers

I’m not saying medical professionals should go without, or that we should immediately start diving into gas station bathrooms to dance around barefoot. But washing your hands will kill germs just as easily as hand sanitizers. Sanitizing your paws every time you touch a door knob will kill most bacteria. But the tough ones that survived will multiply and will be stronger than the cousins you killed off. (Read more about that here.)

The latest product from Apple

iPods are fun. As are iPhones and yes, even iPads are kind of cool. Do they get more fun as the latest updates cycle through every year and/or month? (As giant UFOs bearing the Apple insignia lower into our horizons.) Sure, maybe we all need the ability to instantly play music/record/brew latte with our phones. But why not let your old apples actually fall from the tree before you replace them?

Automatic toilet flushers

One of the greatest questions of our time is obviously – do toilets really need to flush on their own, causing us to flee to the other side of the stall to avoid splash back? And repeat.

Motion-Activated Anything

Recently, I saw an advert for a motion-activity candy dispenser. (Because obesity isn’t enough of a problem in this country. Yes, I’m waving a cranky cane right now.) Motion-activated devices are fantastic for people with disability issues. But how many wheelchairs do we see on escalators? We also opened doors for centuries without the power of electricity.

Throw pillows

When you’re lost under a gigantic pile of plush, you have no one but yourself to blame.

Images: sparkys, susang2, Bed Bath & Beyond, crystalwood, chungyc, ivyfield, amanderson2, @davestone

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