by Kimberly N. Chase
– USA –
Walking through any one of America’s big cities, the wind may brush a candy bar wrapper across the street and giant bags of trash might choke the sidewalk. Some people think nothing of it while others try not to notice the garbage in their midst. But for Annie Leonard, society’s waste is “the most interesting thing in the world.”
Buckhorn Mesa landfill. Photograph by Flickr user Alan Levine and used under a Creative Commons license.
A leading educator and speaker on the subject of the materials economy, Leonard was one of the most recognized speakers at this month’s Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California. Founded in 1990 by Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, the conference attracts top eco-thinkers to collaborate on solutions that will move us toward a healthier planet. Leonard met with me for an exclusive WIP interview on the first day of the conference.
“I love when I go to a new place, digging through garbage cans – I do that whenever I get to a new city,” Annie explains. “It embarrasses my travel companions, but digging through a garbage can and then going to the dump is such a great way to learn about the place where you are. It’s like reading a community’s secret diary because you can find out about so many things, about lifestyle and trade.”
Leonard’s interest in the environment goes back to childhood – she has fond memories of visiting northwestern forests, where she felt completely at ease. Leonard wanted to be a public lands activist, and dreamed of being Secretary of the Interior.
“I remember as a kid just absolutely loving how I felt in the forest. I didn’t understand anything about the ecological importance of forests or the services they provide, I just loved how I felt there emotionally,” she says. “We used to drive up the logging roads and see these huge trucks barreling down with these gigantic logs on them and I just remember it hurt to see those…we’d pass clearcuts [while] driving through this beautiful forest and the clearcuts just looked violent, they were so horrible.”
Later in life while at college in New York City, Leonard noticed the shoulder-high piles of garbage bags that lined the streets near her Barnard classrooms. When she began opening them up, she was shocked to see that it was mostly paper. The majestic trees she had seen cut from those Northwest forests, she reasoned, were ending up as trash on a city street.
“That’s what these beautiful, majestic trees were cut down for?” she thought at the time. “Pizza boxes and office paper, and a lot of stuff that was still perfectly good, or superfluous packaging.”
When she came home after class, the bags were gone and Leonard’s curiosity piqued. A visit to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was the next step.
“I will never forget, as far as I could see in every single direction was waste, was stuff,” she recalls. “It was like a bolt of lightning in terms of my life’s purpose. I just thought, ‘oh my god, something is totally wrong with the way we have set up our economy to take all the beautiful resources the planet provides and turn it into so much waste, so fast,’ and then the fact that it was all hidden out of view.”
Leonard spent the next two decades of her life exploring this phenomenon and trying to tell others her story. She got her start with a job at Greenpeace where she tracked international shipments of toxic waste from rich countries to poor ones, taking her to Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and beyond.
“It was really a fascinating way to travel because so often white North American environmentalists, who are definitely privileged in the global scheme of things, go down to third world countries very well-meaning, saying ‘don’t chop down that forest.’ I really do believe it’s well-intentioned but a lot of times it’s perceived as meddling, or ‘now that we’ve used up all the world’s resources we don’t want [anyone else] to,” she says. “But I was fortunate because I was going to other countries to tell them ‘heads up, my country is about to send you a shipment of toxic waste.’ And so I [think] that the fact that I was working on a problem in my own country made people more open to me. I learned a lot about the interconnectedness of all these issues.”
After Greenpeace, Leonard worked in Ralph Nader’s office for two years and later began to collaborate more with people working on waste issues abroad, helping them to communicate. In 2000, she helped form the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).
Connecting the stages of the production cycle, Leonard began to identify a problem with how the economy was set up. She put her findings together in the wildly popular online film, The Story of Stuff.
Launched in December 2007, the film became an instant success with 250,000 hits the first week, gaining her considerable fame in the environmental community. Her Berkeley-based designers Free Range Studios thought The Story of Stuff would go viral, but no one predicted the level of success it would attain online, especially given its over 20-minute run time. Leonard’s film has now been viewed by 7.3 million people worldwide and she just finished writing The Story of Stuff book, which will be released next Spring by Free Press.
The Story of Stuff makes a big impact through its simplicity – set on a white background with Leonard narrating, the film makes creative use of animation to clarify the trajectory of the material objects in our lives. A survey of production to disposal of virtually everything we buy, The Story of Stuff makes the link between the politics of harvesting materials from developing countries and the super-cheap goods we can buy at Walmart. It also addresses the compulsion to consume resulting from peer pressure to the sneaky practice of planned obsolescence.
Leonard makes it clear that the whole system needs to change. This may be uncomfortable because we’ve become so used to enjoying cheap goods, but that’s where we can see the recession of 2008-9 as a mixed blessing – it has taught many of us the hard way that we only need a fraction of what we previously consumed.
Leonard was right at home at this year’s Bioneers where the theme of problem-solving was paramount. As participants trickled out of the first set of plenary sessions, vendors offered earth-friendly goods and services. At Inka Biospheric Systems, goldfish fish swam in a round, clear tank as water was directed up to a wall of plants before dripping back down into the tank again. Biological systems designer Doug Millar explained that the system is a good option for refugee camps, remote facilities and schools that need to recycle their water between fish and plants. “It demonstrates the possibilities of aquaponics,” Millar said.
At one of the morning sessions, journalist and food system expert Michael Pollan discussed ideas from his recent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
“I brought us a little snack… it doesn’t look like I’ll have enough for everybody,” he joked as he placed a bag with a hamburger inside on the podium.
Pollan proceeded to fill several transparent cups with 26 ounces of chocolate syrup representing the amount of oil required to produce a quarter-pounder with cheese. “This is not a sustainable burger – case closed. It’s a disgusting way to eat.”
Optimistic about Obama’s intentions on US food policy, Pollan explained that while 75 years ago the government was concerned with producing cheap calories for the country’s poor, we now have a situation where the poor are the ones suffering the most from obesity. At the core, he said, the issues of healthcare, energy independence and climate change all relate to what we eat.
Attendee April Wackerman of Fort Collins, Colo., came to Bioneers with two girlfriends and really resonated with the speakers she heard. “I feel like the topics addressed by all these visionaries are really relevant and appropriate,” she said.
Kai Neander of McKinleyville, Calif, finds a sense of community. Representing Roots and Shoots, the youth leadership arm of the Jane Goodall Institute, he came to connect with others in the environmental movement. “Bioneers has created a unique network that is all fighting [to] preserve what we have and create a better world for future generations.”
And for many like Gailey Morgan of Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico, the conference gives him a boost. At Bioneers to participate in the Seed Exchange, he said “It gives people the motivation to go out there and do good things for the planet, to be aware of what’s going on.”
While seeing the scope of the problem can seem overwhelming, Leonard encourages everyone to remain solution-focused, emphasizing that the answer is in our hands and begins with people becoming more engaged in society.
“I think the first step is to get involved,” she says, adding that saving the planet can be fun, ranging from starting a CSA in your neighborhood to lobbying for bike lanes in your community. “It makes me more hopeful because there are so many people who want to change things.”
“It’s so solvable,” Lenoard continues. “We could totally make our stuff without toxic chemicals and without making so much waste. If I thought this was an intractable problem I think I would have given up. But it’s so possible to do it differently that we just can’t stop.”
About the Author
Kimberly N. Chase is a freelance journalist specializing in environmental features for print and television. She graduated in 2005 from Stanford’s MA program in journalism and worked as a crime reporter in California before spending two years in Mexico City. She is now enjoying working on some of the same issues stateside.
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