It’s Important—

One Resident’s Thoughts About ‘Stuff’

By Kendra Bobowick

The Bee is introducing the new series, It’s Important, which includes a brief interview and video revealing — one resident, one idea at a time — what is important to you. Be part of It’s Important. Contact Kendra at 426-3141 or reach her at Kendra@thebee.com.

Who: Benjamin J. Roberts is a representative for First Affirmative Financial Network LLC and runs Conscious Financial Directions from his One Riverside Road Office.

What is important to him: The Story of Stuff — a 20-minute online video. According to its website, The Story of Stuff is a “fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns … [that] exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable world … it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

Leaning forward in his office chair, Mr Roberts was quick to say that everybody needs to see this story.

“You need to laugh, but it’s so depressing when you really think about it,” said Mr Roberts, who had not thought of the video for a while, but watched it again recently and called it “eloquent, easily understood,” and, he hopes, “a challenge.”

Stuff. A consumer society. Diminishing resources. Accumulating trash. The online video looks at how and where things are manufactured, a product’s arrival in stores, then explores an item’s lifecycle. Things are purchased, used, and ultimately thrown away. Mr Roberts talks about planned obsolescence. “How badly can [a manufacturer] design stuff so it breaks and you buy more?”

“Everything we do is bound up in it,” Mr Roberts said. Trash. “We see this as a separate problem, but no, no, no. It’s the way we’ve organized the economy that’s done this.”

He is concerned about stuff, and “the way things become obsolete,” including cars, buildings, coffee mugs — everything we purchase. “It’s a systemic problem.” He worries that we “think of it in bits, and somehow things will work out, it’s compartmentalized.” But that’s “magical thinking,” he said.

He concluded, “We have a lot of work to do; we have to make personal choices. We need a sustainable system.” Even frugal, conservative families struggle to minimize their consumption of “stuff” he notes, but the efforts often are not enough. He would stress several times, “We can’t be passive. We can’t expect technology to fix this for us.”

Visit NewtownBee.com to view the online interview with Mr Roberts, and also to learn how you can share what’s important to you in an upcoming It’s Important column. Learn more about The Story of Stuff at TheStoryOfStuff.com.