Consumer Slavery: The Story of Stuff

Aim of the Lesson:

• to reveal the externalized costs associated with everyday household objects: clothing, jewelry, electronics, cosmetics,...
• to raise awareness of the relationship existing between our role as conumers and consumerism and the impoverishment of developing countires, their land plundering and people's exploitation.
• to reflect on how we are manipulated by the media and on our consumer slavery.
• to encourage students to make changes in their consumption habits and become aware of our responsibility for eaqch other.
• to provide inspiration and guidance for making changes.

Lead-in: 

• Where do your mobile phone, your t-shirt and your trainers come from?
• And the material to make them?
• Where were the raw materials taken from? 
• Where were they manufactured? 
• Who made them?

See video:

After watching the video:

• What did you like about the film?
• What didn’t you like about it?
• What questions did it raise for you?
• What do you feel when you think about changing your relationship to stuff? What would make it easy? What would make it hard?
• What’s the cost of not changing? To you? To the world?

Activity - The True Cost

Preparation:

- Have Black and white copy of map of the world (1 for each team) ready to hand out

- Have True Cost sheets (1 for each team) ready to hand out

- Poster paper, colored paper

 
Summary:

Instructions:

- Have the students break up into four groups by counting off by 4’s (All “ones” are together, all “twos,” etc).

- Have each group find a place in the room to work together.

- Hand out one True Cost sheet (ie, True Cost: Cell Phones) and one map of the world to each group.

Using the information provided in the handout sheets (see below), students will explore the first two stages of an object’s life, what Annie describes in the film as Extraction and Production. Students will learn where some of the most common stuff in their lives comes from and how its made.

Students will work in teams with each team focusing on the true cost of a different object. They will study the information sheet for their object provided. Once they’ve had a chance to digest some of the information, they will work together to create a visual representation of the earliest stages of their stuff- where if comes from, how it got there, what it’s made of, who made it, etc. They will do a short teach-back presentation to the larger group to share their information using a map of the world to help convey the international elements of our relationship with stuff. They will incorporate their visual work into a collective mural.

HAND-OUT SHEETS:

THE TRUE COST: COTTON T-SHIRTS

Instructions:

1. Read through the hand-out marking key/interesting points to use in your presentation, for the cost and for the map.

2. Highlight 3 –5 important points to convey to the group and add them to the map.

3. Estimate what you think the cost of the product should be. (You do not need to mention an amount but talk about the difference between the current price of the product and the price the product should be)

4. Design your presentation for conveying the important points you chose and sharing your conclusion about the True Cost.

The journey from cotton crop to t-shirt is a long one that spans the globe and is filled with social and environmental costs that are hidden from view. These certainly don’t show up in the $5.99 price tag at Target.

To start the journey we have to look at where our cotton is grown. Right now, most cotton is grown is the US, Uzbekistan, Australia, China, India and small African countries like Benin and Burkina Faso. And we’re making a ton of it, 25 million tons to be exact. Each year we produce 25 million tons of cotton globally which is enough to make 15 t-shirts for every single person on earth.

Growing all this cotton means that we are also using a ton of water. Cotton is a very, very, very thirsty crop. In fact, some communities are driving themselves into drought growing cotton for our t-shirts because it uses too much water. People  aren’t getting enough water to drink because the cotton crops are taking it!

Half of the water for our t-shirt obsession comes from other countries, which means we are using and polluting their water to make our Stuff. Not only are we using tons of water, but it turns out t-shirt making is a pesticide-laden business. The majority of the world’s cotton crops are coated in pesticides. In fact, cotton crops use 25% of the world’s insecticides. For every pound of cotton harvested, in the US, about one-third of a pound of pesticides have been sprayed on the crops.

All of the pesticides sprayed on these crops don’t just kill bugs; they harm workers, the planet and neighboring communities. Cotton farm workers and neighboring communities bear the brunt of this burden. They frequently suffer from nerve diseases and vision problems because of the number of toxic chemicals they are exposed to in their work.

InstructionsAnd all that happens before it’s even turned into a t-shirt!

Then you need tons of energy to take it from raw cotton to a t-shirt (which is fueled by oil drilling or dirty coal or likely something else nasty). Then you put all that cotton in the cotton gin, bale the cotton, fluff the cotton, press the cotton, and finally turn it into thread.

When we finally have that thread, we usually bleach the cotton even if we’re going to dye it, usually using chlorine. Chlorine, bummer! Chlorine is toxic all by itself and when it leaves as wastewater it can become a neurotoxin and carcinogen. That means it causes cancer and impairs the way your brain works.

Once the cotton has been bleached and dyed and woven into fabric we want to make

it as easy to take care of as possible, so we spray it down with formaldehyde (yep, like they put frogs in to preserve them before you dissect them) to make it “easy care” fabric. This use of formaldehyde might make our t-shirts soft, wrinkle-resistant, stain and odor resistant, fireproof, mothproof, and antistatic but it also causes respiratory problems, burning eyes, cancer and allergic skin reactions.

At this point, we finally have the fabric to make the t-shirt. Hooray? That fabric gets shipped to a factory or a sweatshop where folks in Haiti or China or Mexico work long days for low wages. Even with all the awareness we now have about dismal working conditions, it’s still true that many factory workers are teens working 11 hour-days for 10-13 cents an hour. That’s $1.10/day. For example, in Haiti, where workers have been struggling for years for better working conditions, the legal minimum wage is still only $3.75 a day!

Once the t-shirt has been whipped together by someone somewhere else working for next to nothing, its shipped to you in the US to find its way to you for under $20.

What do you think the true cost of a t-shirt should be after reading the information below?

THE TRUE COST: MOBILE PHONES

Instructions

1. Read through the hand-out marking key/interesting, points to use in your presentation, for the cost, and for the map.

2. Highlight 3 – 5 important points to convey to the group and add them to the map.

3. Estimate what you think the cost of the product should be. (You do not need to mention an amount but talk about the difference between the current price of the product and the price the product should be)

4. Design your presentation for conveying the important points you chose and sharing your conclusion about the True Cost.

How did the world work before cell phones? While the thought may boggle the mind, equally boggling is the incredible journey that the various components of our cell phones take, and their environmental and social impact to get to us.

Just by looking at one you can probably tell that cell phones are made of plastic, metals and some other hard-to-describe stuff. To be specific, most cell phones are made of 40% metals, 40% plastics, and 20% trace materials and ceramics. All that stuff had to come from somewhere. As a cell phone is nearly half metal that means the metal had to be mined somewhere; that “somewhere” is usually Africa and South America.

One of the vital components in cell phone production is a metal called coltan, which is used in the circuit boards; 80% of the world’s supply of coltan or columbite–tantalite is found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Like Annie mentions in the film, coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is contributing to a continued civil war over the resource. By 2008 the war and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people.

Another metal in cell phone production is gold. That’s right, GOLD! Which is mostly mined in South American and Africa.

It might be hard to tell at first but there is enough gold in 200 cell phones to make a nice sized ring. It turns out gold mining is a pretty nasty process that pollutes water, destroys natural habitats, uproots communities, and leaches toxins into the environment. In addition to gold and coltan, most of our cell phones also have copper, beryllium, lead, nickel, and zinc, which all have to be extracted from the earth, putting both the planet and, the most important thing, workers' lives at risk.

Mining is a super toxic practice involving cyanide and tons of other nasty chemicals that leach into the groundwater of surrounding communities creating devastating environmental and health impacts. Mining is also dangerous to humans; it is one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America with over 1,000 deaths in the last 15 years. Many of the miners are children. They work in harzardous conditions, many have accidents and die.

Cell phone batteries come in all different sizes and styles: lithium ion, nickel cadmium, lead acid but they all have one thing in common—they all require more mining which is just more of the same destruction, people's diseases and death, displacement, and pollution.

What do you think the true cost of a mobile phone should be after reading the information below?

THE TRUE COST: COSMETICS

Instructions

1. Read through the hand-out marking key/interesting points to use in your presentation, for the cost, and for the map.

2. Highlight 3 – 5 important points to convey to the group and add them to the map.

3. Estimate what you think the cost of the product should be. (You do not need to mention an amount but talk about the difference between the current price of the product and the price the product should be)

4. Design your presentation for conveying the important points you chose and sharing your conclusion about the True Cost.

Most of us use lots of personal care products everyday. Every day the average woman (and in an increasing number men) uses 12 products containing 168 chemical ingredients while the average man uses 6 products with 80 different chemicals. We want to smell, look, and feel good. So we shampoo our hair, Slather on sunscreen, roll on deodorant, apply mascara, and put on Chapstick. But what is all this stuff we’re putting on our bodies? Reading the ingredients list on any of your cosmetics or personal care products doesn’t give us much of a clue? For most of us, it’s just a long list of strange chemicals.

With cosmetics and personal care products, extraction is a big issue. Let’s start with just the container. Most products use a petroleum-based plastic container. This means that we’re tearing up the Tar Sands in Canada and destroying rainforest in the Amazon to get access to all the oil it takes to make all the plastic for those containers.

Then there is what goes in those containers, there’s a huge range of products used for “personal care,” and while the extraction process varies greatly for each one, the production process is pretty consistent across the board. Consistently toxic! In the US, the stuff that we slather onto our bodies to take good care of ourselves turns out to practically be poison. The chemicals in them are linked to cancer, birth defects and other serious health problems. In a study done in 2005 of thousands of personal care products, they found:

• One-third of all products tested contain at least one ingredient linked to cancer

• Almost half the tested products contained at least one ingredient that is harmful to the reproductive system

• One half include penetration enhancer that help them (and all the toxic chemicals) move deeper into the body faster  

How can this be? Isn’t there anybody regulating this? The answer is, “No.” There is no neutral agency overseeing the cosmetic industry to insure our safety. It’s a virtual free for all. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Panel is the only organization responsible for testing the safety of these products. This panel is part of the cosmetic industry itself (you know, the ones who profit when we buy the stuff). Why should we trust them when they’re the ones who profit from sales?

However, this is not the worst part, India exports mica, which is used to make goods such as glossy lipstick and eyeshadow. In the cosmetic industry there are children as young as 6 squatting in the scorching midday sun, sifting jagged stones in an open-cast mine in the hope of getting mica to be able to earn enough money for a meal.   

You can get a lipstick for under 6€. What should it really cost?

CONCLUSION:

What can we do? Are we powerless?  Of course, not!  There are a lot of things to be done as long as we decide to get involved.

-Hand out an Action Plan sheet to every student.

ACTION PLAN SHEET

Action Plan Instruction Sheet

1.  Think about the actions:

What actions can we do to fight against the manipulation we are subject to?
What can we do to get more people to become aware of this appaling reality?
What actions can make a difference to others, especially exploited people?

2.  Decide which actions to take.

     Decide which actions you will do with your buddy and which you will do by yourself.

3.  Remember to show your parent(s)/guardian(s) your action plan when you get home and ask them to support you.

4.  Check in with your buddy at least one time this week to see if you are carrying out these actions.

Some Ideas:

• Think of ways to reduce your stuff
• Do not buy unnecessary stuff - Every time you want to buy something, stop for a minute, look at the object you want, and consider the people and places that were affected by that thing. Is the real cost of having that object worth it to you? Do you really need it?
• Talk with church organizers and set a date for a congregation wide Stuff Swap
• Prepare a presentation and deliver a speech together with others (at school, in your neighbourhood...)
• Stick posters on the walls of your class and school to raise awareness
• Find out more information about workers' exploitation, child slavery, consumerism... and share it with your class and the people you know
• Associate: join a youth organisation that fights against youth manipulation and injustice: unemployment, child slavery...