The Effects of Consumerism and the Air We Breathe

In the video "The Story Stuff" with Annie Leonard, she states how we're running a linear system on a finite planet and how that system cannot continue forever or all of our resources will run out. She preaches sustainability and turning this cycle into a circular system that can eventually maintain itself on our planet. During production of the all the products we buy there is input of over 100,000 synthetic chemicals, of which we barely know the harmful effects they may have on us. Even more toxic chemicals are released into the air and environment as pollution from production. As Annie Leonard states, even when we move factories overseas we are hurting others and the pollution can still be carried back to us by wind currents. Disposal of all our garbage and burning it seems to be a tremendous problem we face. All those chemicals that we put into our products are burned and released into the air as pollution. This pollution of our air is undoubtedly completely unhealthy for us. Not to mention some of it will fall back down to our earth in the form of rain and form undrinkable waterways. The air we breathe is supposed to be fresh and sacred. How can we constantly be putting synthetic chemicals into the air we breathe without realizing the harmful impacts? Granted people like to take the easy way out, and incinerating our garbage causes less space to be taken up, but doing something about this now would greatly reduce our health risks later. We need to learn to recycle things properly and shut down the incineration of garbage. There's got to be a better, more practical way of going about things that includes our health and a healthy environment for the other species we share our planet with.