As Earth Hour takes place this week on March 27th, I thought it fitting to have a post about the environment.

If you’ve frequented a dollar store lately, you may notice the wide assortment of goods that one lil’ dollar can get you. And if you’re like me, you may also wonder how on earth some of these things manage to cost only one dollar. Well there is a story behind the stuff that we buy—a story that many consumers either don’t know about or perhaps choose to ignore.

This 20 minute video features environmental activist Annie Leonard. She deftly explains the entire cycle of our consumer-driven society from the masterminds who orchestrated our desires to shop, to how raw materials are extracted from the earth, to the factories that make our goods, and finally to how our stuff is disposed of.

While this video focuses on the U.S. I’m sure many of these facts are similar in other industrialized nations.