> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409040231
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

The Secret Life of Stuff

A Manual for a New Material World




Like The Omnivore's Dilemma, this inventory of how we consume stuff is a wake-up call - shocking but inspiring.

Wouldn't you like:

- Products that don't damage the environment?

- A better way of life without agonising about your 'footprint'?

- To really know your stuff?


Climate change? Biofuels? Nuclear power? Landfills? Recycling? Renewable energy? Environmental issues can feel overwhelming. But, in fact, it is simple; it all comes down to one thing - stuff.

Our use of the Earth's resources - whether a crisp packet or a cargo ship, a T-shirt or a wind turbine - has an inescapable impact on our future. In The Secret Life of Stuff, Julie Hill uncovers the origins and the true cost of what we use. Her inventory of over-consumption may shock but it is the first step towards overcoming waste. The misuse of stuff is not your fault, it's a product of history. But it is only by understanding what has gone wrong, that everyone - politicians, business people and us as consumers - can create a new and better material world.

  • Published: 15 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409040231
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

About the author

Julie Hill

Julie Hill has worked in the environment movement for twenty-five years, for leading environmental group Green Alliance, as well as for businesses and government.She counts her experiences as parent, consumer and citizen to be just as relevant to The Secret Life of Stuff as those generated by being a life-long environmentalist.

Praise for The Secret Life of Stuff

Hill is refreshingly, defiantly optimistic... The more you read this book, the more you come to realise that the future she describes isn't the pie-in-the-sky environmentalist wish-fulfilment fantasy it first appears - it's within our grasp

Roger Cox, Scotsman

Instead of piling doom and gloom onto the shoulders of readers, Julie Hill outlines a positive plan for a world spring clean...the result makes fascinating reading

Daily Echo

Worldly but erudite... Enlightening

Independent