Reviews

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health - and a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard

megthegrand's review against another edition

5.0

This book is depressing, for all the reasons you can imagine, but I am so glad to have read it. While I feel anxious and upset over what the future holds in terms of the environment, I also felt hopeful about the steps that some companies and organizations are taking to combat pollution and climate change.

justiceofkalr's review against another edition

3.0

This book will make you angry at everything and everyone for fucking the world up. But angry in a good way, I guess. Like go out and do things angry.

ioana_cis's review against another edition

3.0

A very intensive book - as it is written conscious of the amount of paper used, the font size was small and a page felt so heavily in as it contained so much information - slow reading for me.

As it is not my first book nor reading on this topic I knew a lot of the info presented and also about the solutions she suggested - still I consider it a good reading.

I do hope more people read about it and take action or at least see the video.

kwbridge's review against another edition

4.0

This book should be required reading in high school. Everyone should read it and take a hard look what it means to have an economic model based on consumption.

ev_loy's review against another edition

Out of date and very American focused 

buffalogal17's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

bookzealots's review against another edition

1.0

For the most part, this book's suggestions don't work for the community my family lives in. However, I would venture to say, she probably has a bigger carbon footprint than I do. Trying to get to zero waste is an impossible utopia. Utopia, by the way, is a nonexistent place. Can we all be good stewards and be responsible? Yes. And we should be.
I will never ride a bike to my "local" grocery store. It's not possible.
Is it possible for people to cut back on plastics, yes, have counties, clean tap water and make it drinkable again. Stop using plastic bags and go back to brown bags.
Have companies make items that don't have a die date ie. like all technology, washers/dryers, etc. with the companies making things to last generations again, (like Maytag used to be), we will have less waste.
just my two cents, and I didn't waste a bunch of trees printing a useless book.

Why does goodreads keep changing the edition of the books I've read to foreign languages?!

pbobrit's review against another edition

4.0

Probably not the best book to read just before Christmas, but still a good and very scary read. I did not see the film that this book accompanies it. It follows all the steps 'Stuff' (anything we consume), from the extraction of the raw materials to make it all the way through to the disposal mechanisms we use when it is discarded, and there are some very worrying insights in there. Leonard in the end is advocating a 'Zero Waste' philosophy, which is an achievable goal (New Zealand apparently is aiming for this as well with some success), but for the US and a lot of the developed world needs some radical changes to get anywhere close. A dense but interesting read for anyone interested in this kind of area.

alyssa_s10's review against another edition

I really just know all this information already from watching environmentalists YouTube. 

gphamadi's review against another edition

hopeful informative

4.0