Stuff
The Secret Lives of Everyday Things
- written by Alan C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning
"DO YOU KNOW YOUR STUFF?
- Car
- Bicycle
- Cheeseburger
- Newsprint
- This book
- Coffee
- Aluminum
- Computer chip
- Cotton
- What the average American consumes daily
- It take 700 gallons of water to make.
- The world's second largest export (after oil).
- The leading killer of Americans ages 2 to 24.
- The U.S. consumes 40 percent of the world supply.
- 120 pounds.
- The most efficient transport vehicle ever invented.
- So energy intensive it is called "congealed electricity".
- Making it generates 4,500 times its weight in waste.
- 93 percent postconsumer waste.
- 10 percent of world pesticides used on it.
DESCRIPTION: A web seminar course based on the small, easy-to-read book "Stuff" by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning, Northwest Environment Watch, January 1997, 88 pages, $9.95. An excerpt from the description of the book by Northwest Environment Watch:
"Stuff follows a day in the life of a fictional, typical North American middle-class resident of Seattle. Nothing terribly unusual or dramatic happens. Unless you count average consumption - which Stuff does. Tracing back the layers of distribution, commerce, and production involved in everyday consumer goods Stuff is an engaging and fact-packed look at the people and places that are affected every time you sip your coffee, tie your shoes, click your mouse, step on the gas, or read a book. In the process, you'll find that what happens around the world to support a day in the life of an average Northwesterner is not only dramatic, but disturbing. If you don't know your stuff - and their secret lives - you don't know your world."
SCHEDULE: Begins: 14 May; Ends by: 3 August, 2001.
FORMAT: Online and web-based (requires a computer with internet, email, and CD-ROM); Self-paced; Online discussions with classmates and instructor.
ASSIGNMENTS: Online discussion sessions and several short essays posted online for peer review and grading; no exams.
SUMMER REGISTRATION: Natrs 419, section 1, variable 1-2 credits (i.e., 2 credits if coupled with additional seminar readings - contact instructor). Register through the WSU Summer Session: (http://www.summer.wsu.edu). After you register, send a confirming email to the NRS summer session coordinator to receive additional course information: R.D. Sayler (rdsayler@wsu.edu)to the instructor: R.D. Sayler (rdsayler@wsu.edu).
