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Storytelling is at the heart of who
we are:
it’s how we frame the challenges we face, drive
support toward the solutions we love and inspire
our Community members to flex their citizen
muscles.
We made a big shift in our
award-winning storytelling on the plastics
crisis this year with the launch of
Solving
Plastic, a miniseries
profiling meaningful solutions to runaway
single-use plastic consumption. The series has been a
big success, drawing significant view counts
across our social media channels and, more
importantly, giving us the opportunity to
introduce you to the organizations, companies
and individuals pioneering a plastic-free
future.
This winter
we’ll produce four additional Solving
Plastic features, bringing the
total number of videos in the series near a
dozen. We’ll also focus on creating a suite of
wraparound tools to go with the series,
including a study guide, additional information
on the website about the profiled solutions and
webinars – open to all Community members – with
the profiled companies or
organizations.
Our solutions-oriented storytelling
approach continues in early 2023 with the
release of Burning
Injustice (working title), our
short documentary profiling the
multi-generational fight to close one of
California’s two remaining solid waste
incinerators – Covanta Stanislaus – and return
Modesto, CA and surrounding communities to their
zero waste roots.
Through vivid,
human-centered storytelling we’ll paint a
striking picture of environmental racism and
injustice and make the moral argument for the
incinerator’s closure. We’ll also highlight our
Grassroots Grantee and partner Valley
Improvement Project’s efforts to return Modesto
to environmental trailblazer status, enabling us
to meet a critical goal in our plastic solutions
storytelling: ensuring that we center solutions
that most benefit communities that have borne
the brunt of the plastic pollution
itself.
We’ll also be
producing a five-minute video explainer on the
Global Plastics
Treaty
negotiations that got underway this
past summer, drawing back the veil for
viewers by helping them understand what the
proposed treaty is all about, why it matters and
how folks can encourage our governments to adopt
the strongest possible terms.
Multilateral
institutions and agreements are famously opaque
to all but the most technically informed and
capable. Our explainer will break it all down:
we’ll assess which countries are on board, which
need to be pushed and the contours of their
disputes; we’ll discuss the role global
corporations are poised to play in the
negotiations and the ways in which advocates are
pushing back; and we’ll explore ways for
ordinary citizens to hold their leaders’ feet to
the fire.
While telling great stories is at the
heart of everything we do, we also believe that
information alone won’t win the change we need.
So we couple our storytelling with citizen
action.
Our campaigns are meant to both have a strategic
impact on the way we make, use and throw away
Stuff as well as inspire our Community to learn,
participate and grow.
Like our storytelling, our
plastics-related campaigning is increasingly
solutions oriented: in California this
year we were successful in influencing and
passing legislation that will give state agency
CalRecycle hundreds of millions of dollars over
the coming three years to modernize our
container deposit system, including a $25
million dollar investment to facilitate the
transition to refillables. Over the coming
months, we’ll be pushing the state to spend
those dollars in under-resourced communities, in
particular those who’ve borne the brunt of the
current waste system, to encourage a just
transition.
That push is
part of a broader effort we’re undertaking
around the country to use the scale of deposit
systems to build refillable bottle
infrastructure. We also expect to join with
others to introduce a principled
national bottle
bill,
staking out what a strong and successful federal
deposit return system could look
like.
And while we
await the final ruling in our California Water
Board case against water bottling giant
BlueTriton, which continues to remove tens of
millions of gallons of water from the San
Bernardino National Forest, we’ll continue to
press the U.S. Forest
Service
to explain why it gave the company a new special
use permit recently despite the apparent lack of
a complete application!
Of course,
fighting plastics isn’t the only thing on our
Community’s agenda. We’ll continue to support
Right to Repair bills around the country and
this coming spring we’re hoping to ramp up our
support for the labor, environmental and other
networks putting the heat on Amazon. More on
that soon.
Throughout our history we’ve made a
point of playing well with others and that has
continued to be a winning strategy for the Story
of Stuff Project to this day. Our centerpiece
Grassroots Grants program will make
$100,000 in small grants to predominantly people
of color-led and serving grassroots groups this
year, a new high point in the program’s giving.
In 2023, we’ll continue to award a total of
$100,000 in direct grants, and raise additional
funds for program outcomes, like media
collaborations and other ‘beyond the dollars’
support for our grantees.
Story of
Stuff Grassroots Grantee Rio Grande
International Study Center's Campaign to
Eliminate Ethylene Oxide Emissions in Laredo,
TX
I’m
continuously amazed at the eagerness of
organizations large and small to collaborate
with us, something that is no doubt rooted in
our Community’s continued engagement and
generosity. I’m talking about the funds you
contribute, the actions you take, the friends
you share our content with, and everything else
you’ve done over the past 15 years to create a
more sustainable, healthy, and just
future.
So
I’d like to invite you to join us once again in
this work. Your financial
support makes everything we do possible and for
that we are grateful. Make your year end gift
today online, via check to our
address below, or with a stock donation. Our
Development Manager Smruti Aravind is available
to answer any questions you may have about
giving at smr...@storyofstuff.org. You can also
reach me directly at
mic...@storyofstuff.org.
The Story of Stuff
Project
1442 A Walnut Street,
#272
Berkeley, CA 94709
USA
Thank you for
everything you do to make this world a better
place.
All the
best,
Michael
O'Heaney
Executive
Director | 
Annie breaks down
the exploitative linear economy in The Story
of Stuff
