Are You A Conscious Consumer? Or Are You Consciously Consumed? by TREMAYNE TATEM

The Story of Our Consumption

Bill Cosby raised a very interesting point a few years ago in his very controversial speech about poor conditions of African-Americans. He was discouraged by how low-income African-Americans will spend $100-$150 for a pair of sneakers for their children instead of buying educational toys. Let’s face it, African-Americans including myself love to spend money on the latest and greatest stuff. It has been reported that we spent $845 billion dollars on stuff in 2007. For more about African-American consumption habits checkout this article.

The Story of Our World

What I really want to bring to your attention is that we buy all this stuff without seeing the whole picture of when a product goes through the phases of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal.(If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry it will be explained later.) We don’t realize how powerful our dollars could be if we take the time to think about our purchases. I’m not saying to stop buying things, I am saying lets be more conscious about it and the affects our spending has on the global society and environment around us.

The Story of Stuff

What I want to share with you is a powerful video on this topic of how our consumption affects the world around us. It was very eye-opening and changed my perspective on alot of things. The name of the video is The Story of Stuff,written by Annie Leornard and produced by Free Range Studios. I have attached the introduction of the video and the full length video, which is 20 minutes. I also included a .pdf of recommendations they give you to make more conscious steps toward your consumption habits. Don’t be overwhelmed with the ideas that they list on the .pdf, take baby steps into this or if you feel passionate about this go full throttle. The whole point is move at your own pace. For example, my wife she is an avid user of www.freecycle.org, which is one of the organizations she recommends as a way to be more conscious. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video, and let me know what you think and some ways the video affected you.


Check out more from Tremayne at www.tremaynetatem.com or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/tremaynetatem.