A review by auntie_bones
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

3.0

For anyone looking for motivation to reduce your shopping and trash-making, this is a great book to read. It is loaded with information and research. I appreciated that Annie Leonard did not write with an anti-human spirit. I don't share her anti-American, anti-capitalism views, although I do agree that both things merit a fair amount of criticism. The reason I gave it three stars instead of four is that it dealt with waste on a political and industrial level more than on an individual level. And that's just where we differ in our approach, she believes policies need to change more than the individual, and I believe the individual needs to change before policies can become effective. So there was much less take-home, applicable information in the book. I preferred Bea Johnson's "Zero Waste Home" because it dealt with waste on an individual level. I believe both the individual and the companies are responsible for waste, I just believe real change starts in the home. Political differences aside, this is a must-read for anyone concerned about waste and the environment.