As we head towards another weekend. I would urge you to think about what you will be doing with the various “Stuff” that you own.  Why am I asking you this? Well, I attended a Bookshop Barniewith Julie Hill on her new book “The Secret Life of Stuff: A Manual for a New Material World” And it got me thinking.  One thing I found out from doing some additional research was that stuff moves through a system:

1. Extraction
2. Production
3. Distribution
4. Consumption
5. Disposal

Watch a video from storyofstuffproject that gives a nice overview.

You can buy the book at Amazon 

“We all love stuff – I am no exception” says Julie Hill, former director (now associate), Green Alliance and goes on to argue that: “we humans have a come a long way – why waste our talents worrying about bins?” Consequently, The Ecologist magazine says that Hill’s book is “not especially realistic”.  In her book The Secret Life of Stuff: A Manual for a New Material World she talks about choice editing and how the world is changing due to a growing population.

What struck me as most significant was the fact that as Apple had only the day before launched their iPad2 then why was she advocating a book about the secret life of stuff, when it could be argued that as a physical paper product, surely by buying it we would be contributing to the increase in more book purchasing “Stuff”. I don’t know the answer to this question. However as I look forward to the weekend all I can think about is all that “Stuff”