The Story of Stuff – Bottled Water and Cosmetics

First of all, let me just say that I think the woman in these videos needs to not be shown. I found her to be obnoxious and condescending. Putting a face to the voice just did not aid in my experience watching the Story of Bottled Water and the Story of Cosmetics. I found her participation to be too contrived and cheesy. I think the video animations could have been stronger without her presence and just a voice over.

Anyways, I found the overall point of these videos to be actually interesting. I started by watching the bottled water one. I never knew the story behind bottled water came from companies being concerned that soda bottle sales were going down. I’ve never really thought about why someone even tries to sell water in a bottle when there are water fountains around. What the video said about the design of the bottle was interesting – how companies use imagery of mountains and pristine lakes to show that their water is the best water – when in reality it is just filtered water.  I do not buy bottled water that often, because I do carry a refillable water bottle all the time. While a little bit of it does have to do with environmental conservatism, it mostly has to do with the fact that I drink a ton of water and many times it is easier to find a water fountain than a vending machine. I found it to be completely ridiculous when the woman compared carrying around bottled water to being just as uncool as smoking while pregnant. Bad comparison.

Then I watched the Story of Cosmetics. I guess I am so used to hearing about how every thing contains carcinogens and toxins that it does not really faze me that much. I’ve heard that refillable water bottles contain carcinogens…but that’s better than buying bottled water, right? Okay, anyways, something that I did relate to is the labels and FDA laws. It is frightening that products can put natural, organic or herbal on anything and that there is no legal definition of these terms. It also bugs me that the FDA doesn’t require all ingredients of a product to be listed on a label. As many people in the program know, I found out in January that I am allergic to 38 of the 42 most common food allergens. It has been a major struggle to eliminate some of the foods that cause more of a reaction because similarly to the personal care products, the FDA doesn’t have strict regulations for labeling. For example, the thing I am most allergic to is black pepper. Black pepper is very, very, very hard to stay away from. And the FDA does not require products to say that there is black pepper in it. Things can say “Spice” on the label, which can mean just about anything. Sometimes black pepper is included, sometimes it isn’t. The second thing I am most allergic to is barley and once again the FDA does not require barley to be disclosed on a food label. So basically I think the FDA needs to step up to promote more regulation of labels, both on food labels and on cosmetic labels.