Annie Leonard > Story of Cosmetics, story of bottled water, story of electronics.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of Cosmetics, she talks about how consumers use a range of different cosmetics each day without knowing what the ingredients of the cosmetics actually are and what effects they have on the human body. Annie Leonard also brings up the fact that it is not only the consumers who are affected by these chemicals, but also the people working in the factories in which the cosmetics are manufactured, the communities around the factories and the environment at both the extraction of these ingredients and the disposal stages of these cosmetics.
Annie Leonard has identified that the system has been corrupted by big companies that are only interested in profit and not the damage they are causing to everything around the world, and the governments are allowing big companies to slip pass only because they help keep the economy going.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of Bottled Water, she talks about why consumers are paying so much for bottled water, especially when water from tap is just as safe and tastier to drink and on top of that, there is a great amount of non-renewable resources being used up in the production of bottled water, also many communities affected by the production and disposal of bottled water.
Annie Leonard has also identified that the big companies supplying and manufacturing these products have ‘Manufactured Demand’ by scaring consumers out of drinking tap water, then these big companies mislead and seduce consumers by creating a fantasy that bottled water comes of pristine mountain streams.

In Annie Leonard’s video, Story of electronics, she talks about the term ‘Designed for the dump’ which refers to products that companies have designed specifically to be purchased, used and thrown away within a short period of time. This is common within electronics these days, they are hard to upgrade, easy to break and pointless to repair because a new product with the same function is much cheaper than the repair cost. Big companies are doing this on purpose because they want consumers to keep buying more and more products, while the companies are collecting sales and profits, they are destroying the environment by being irresponsible and turning a blind eye to the disposal stage of their old products.

As designers, we should take the initiative to design in a better way and for a healthier environment and also take control of what happens to the products we design.