Week+4

The Story of Stuff' with Annie Leonard at[|**http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html**]
 * __Week 4__**

Write three paragraphs on how Annie Leonard defines the system of the 'materials economy' and describe its interactions.


According to Annie Leonard, all the stuff that we use in our everyday life moves through a basic system. She pointed out that it is a system in crisis, as she referred as “materials economy”, is a linear system that is bumping up against limits which has no consideration of any responsible practices for our environment and society issues. She further defines this “materials economy” through five stages: Extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. 

First of all, “extraction” is just a fancy word for trashing the planet, according to Annie Leonard. She defines the process of extraction as cutting down the trees, using up the water, land and so forth. We are running out of natural resources and, therefore, leading towards our first limit. Next, these resources move to “production”. Production consists of producing the products with toxic materials. Eventually these products contain toxics that we touch and use everyday. Throughout this process, not only resources get wasted but people and the whole community gets wasted too. The people that have no more natural resources to work on have no choices but to move into those fully toxicant factories to work in. Eventually, more and more toxics are produced reaching to another limit. 

The next step is “distribution”, which consists of selling these toxic products to consumers as fast as possible. Their goal is to keep the prices down and keep the inventories moving. By doing so, they externalized the cost. That is, people along the process pitch in the products cost with their natural resources, health care and so on. Thus, we as consumers are able to get products for a low cost. Moreover, in this consumption era, the producers courage us to buy more and throw more stuff neglect of the products’ usefulness. They are able to inject value and meanings into products so we consistently buy new stuff and throw out the old ones. At the end, all these junks go into “disposal”. All along the process we are, again, running up against our limits.