We Americans are great consumers of "stuff." We love stuff. Our large houses are stuffed with stuff, then we rent storage space to store more stuff. Each year we buy new stuff to replace our old stuff. Most of these techno-trinkets will be trashed in a few months.

"Less than 1 percent of all the consumer goods bought and sold during the holiday season will be in use six months from now," says Annie Leonard in "The Story of Stuff," a short film produced by Free Range Films and available free online at www.storyofstuff.com .

"The Story of Stuff" chronicles the life of consumer goods from the "cradle to the grave," and offers an alternative vision to our consumerist culture. Leonard points out that we have lost our identities as "mothers, farmers, firemen, teachers, and become consumers."

If you are feeling overwhelmed by stuff, and want to step off the vicious treadmill of working to support your stuff, here are a few of Leonard's suggestions adapted from "The Story of Stuff":

- Power down. A great deal of the resources we use and the waste we create is in the energy we consume. Look for opportunities in your life to significantly reduce energy use: Drive less, fly less, turn off lights, buy local seasonal food, wear a sweater instead of turning up the heat, use a clothesline instead of a dryer, vacation closer to home, buy used or borrow things before buying new, recycle.

- Waste less. There are hundreds of opportunities each day to nurture a zero-waste culture in your home, school, workplace, church and community. This takes developing new habits into a new second nature. Use both sides of the paper, carry your own mugs and shopping bags, get printer cartridges refilled instead of replaced, compost food scraps, avoid bottled water and other over-packaged products, upgrade computers rather than buying new ones, repair and mend rather than replace.

Talk to everyone about these issues. At school, your neighbors, in line at the supermarket, on the bus, talk about the stuff of stuff.

- Make Your Voice Heard. Write letters to the editor and submit articles to local press. Letters to the editor are a great way to help newspaper readers make connections they might not make without your help.

- Detox your world. Many of today's consumer products - from children's pajamas to lipstick - contain toxic chemical additives that simply aren't necessary. Together, ask the businesses why they're using toxic chemicals without any warning labels. And ask your elected officials why they are permitting this practice.

- Unplug TV and plug into the community. The average person in the U.S. watches TV for more than four hours a day. Those four hours are filled with messages about stuff we should buy. Those are four hours that could be spent with family, friends and in your community.

- Park your car and walk. Car-centric land-use policies and lifestyles lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel extraction, conversion of agricultural and wilderness to roads and parking lots. Driving less and walking more is good for the climate, the planet, your health and your wallet.

- Change your light bulbs, and your paradigm. Energy-efficient light bulbs use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than conventional ones. But changing light bulbs is just tinkering at the margins of a fundamentally flawed system, unless we also change our paradigm.

A paradigm is a collection of assumptions, concepts, believes and values that together make up a community's way of viewing reality. Our current paradigm dictates that more stuff is better, that infinite economic growth is desirable and possible, and that pollution is the price of progress. To really turn things around, we need to nurture a different paradigm, based on the values of sustainability, justice, health and community.

- Recycle your trash. Recycling saves energy and reduces both waste and the pressure to harvest and mine new stuff. Unfortunately, many cities still don't have adequate recycling systems in place. In that case you can usually find some recycling options in the phone book to start recycling while you're pressuring your local government to support recycling city-wide.

Buy green, buy fair, buy local, buy used and, most importantly, buy less.

Shopping is not the solution to the environmental problems we currently. The real changes we need just aren't for sale in even the greenest shop. But, when we do shop, we should ensure our dollars support businesses that protect the environment and worker rights. Yet, buying less may be the best option of all. Less pollution. Less waste. Less time working to pay for the stuff. Sometimes, less really is more.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning sustainable artist and writer who lives in a green home in the Hudson Valley of New York.

© Copley News Service

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