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from Free Tech 4 Teachers blog: "Loop Scoops is a series of eight videos about consumerism from PBS Kids. Each short (1-2 minutes) animated video features a short story with little lesson at the end. If students miss the lesson in the video they can click the "what's the deal?" button to read the lesson. The overall intent of Loop Scoops is to get kids thinking about the products they use everyday. The videos present lessons about what common products are made of, how those products are made, and what happens when a product is trashed." Annie Leonard (The Story of Stuff) helped direct the project

"The Film The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture-from resource extraction to iPod incineration. Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about "all our stuff-where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away." Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history where she says the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of "planned obsolescence" and "perceived obsolescence" -and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today. Leonard's inspiration for the film began as a personal musing over the question, "Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?" She traveled the world in pursuit of the answer to this seemingly innocent question, and what she found along the way were some very guilty participants and their unfortunate victims. "