Annie Leonard: Don’t Just “Be the Change.” Make Change!

When Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff Project) admonishes us to “make change,” she’s not talking about dimes and quarters. She’s one of my personal heroes and someone I was excited to interview back in 2010. So you can imagine how honored I was this year when asked if she could interview me for her podcast The Good Stuff, a companion piece to her new video, The Story of Change. The premise of the video and podcast is that personal changes are great, but they’re not enough. As Annie puts it, “Conscious consumerism is a great place to start, but it’s a lousy place to stop.” After watching the movie (it’s only 6-1/2 minutes long), do you agree?
In the the companion podcast, Annie interviews me along with people like Ralph Nader and Van Jones about how to go beyond personal lifestyle changes to make change on a more systemic level. I talk about how making changes in my own life led… Read the rest