Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all of you are enjoying a day filled with family, friends and copious amounts of homemade food. As most of you know, tomorrow is “Black Friday” - the busiest shopping day of the year. Many stores open at the crack of dawn for customers attempting to complete their holiday gift-giving lists, most of them scurrying to find the greatest deals.

Although we are dealing with a sagging economy, Neilsen forecasters expect a 4.7% gain in dollar sales over the 2007 holiday retail season**. Pretty surprising, right? Let’s face it - there is a LOT of stuff out there.

Have you ever actually pondered the story of stuff? Where it comes from? How it’s produced and used? Its disposal? If so, I highly recommend checking out The Story of Stuff**. This entertaining video takes you from the very beginning to the very end - from its extraction through sale, use and disposal, it shows how the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad. Honestly, the video completely blew my mind.

Some interesting facts from the video**:

• In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resources base have been consumed
• In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left
• Forty percent of waterways in the US have become undrinkable
• The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources and creates 30% of the world’s waste
• There are over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today
• In the U.S., industry admits to releasing over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals a year
• The average U.S. person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago
• In the U.S., we spend 3–4 times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do
• Each person in the United States makes 4 1/2 pounds of garbage a day. That is twice what we each made thirty years ago

The Story of Stuff** might just change the way you feel about your Black Friday shopping excursion. In fact, I think I’ll just stay home this year and finish off the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

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