Saturday, March 13, 2010

Sweet Tweets and "Stuff"

1.  Thank you to David de Rothschild for "Tweeting" this blog this morning...what a great find on your Plastiki website--you made my day:   
: message in a bottle Green Team Gazette:  Earth Day, Earth Hour, & 
the Plastiki http://bit.ly/9KxW6O yesterday 07:17 am  from http://www.theplastiki.com/

2.  I'm very much looking forward to hitting up Washington DC's "Politics and Prose" bookstore tomorrow to catch Annie Leonard and her book talk about "The Story Of Stuff."  David de Rothschild alluded to Annie Leonard's site/book in his CNN video on "Expedition Plastiki" at   http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2010//10/amanpour.plastiki.de.rothschild.cnn?iref=allsearch.   
"Stuff does not equal happiness" (though, on any given Sunday at the local mall, seeing the consumers out, shopping away, do most people believe that?!)    We want stuff...we buy stuff...we temporarily feel blissful about our stuff....we clean out the stuff in our garages (as I did today) and get rid of tons of stuff.  What is that?  Are we happier?  Does our pile of stuff/recyclables/stuff for Goodwill make us happier in the end?  Nope, nada, nien, non, zilch.  

Annie's got her finger on the pulse.  We bury ourselves under the things we felt we couldn't live without.  Some might call that "entrapment" as we are shackled to our stuff.  And yet... we get rid of that stuff--later.  Annie's point is that we, as Americans, humans, consumers, take in wayyyy too much...much of which is trashed in 6 months!  This illustrates David de Rothschild's Dumb Planet 1.0:  "We have this sort of voracious appetite for throwaway, single-use plastics, what I call Dumb Planet 1.0 plastics -- the plastic bag, the Styrofoam cup.."  Our poor planning creates piles of waste.  We need Smart Planet 2.0.

So, here we are, buried under our stuff, but with the message that we need to do what?  Reduce our waste.  Reuse!  Recycle!!  Rethink--what the heck are we doing and what can we do better?!!  Responsibility and Respect!  Reclaim a new way of thinking with a clarity that is missing.   We can do this.  We should do this.  Why are we not doing this?  

To see an interview with Annie Leonard, click "Sweet Tweets & Stuff" above, or go to http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/03/09/swimming.in.stuff.amanpour.cnn?iref=allsearch

"Together is the only way we can move forward and create the necessary solutions for our oceans and our planet."  ~David de Rothschild
  
picture from http://www.storyofstuff.org/

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