On campus to tell “The Story of Stuff,” Annie Leonard, filmmaker and author, discussed overconsumption Tuesday night at this year’s One Book, One Campus event at the Illini Union.

During Leonard’s speech, she discussed what drove her to create the animated short film and book entitled “The Story of Stuff,” as well as the effect it has had on the community.

She began her presentation by showing the short film. In this animation, she gives environmental statistics, such as that the United States makes up 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 30 percent of the resources.

Leonard spent two decades visiting factories in Pakistan and China to see how all of the “stuff” we consume is made. She hoped to shed light on consumption for the rest of the world by making an animation with all of her findings.

With over 13 million views in three years, she accomplished the goal she set for herself to start the conversation about overconsumption.

“It’s always interesting to know that the USA has such a detrimental impact on natural resources and on causing so much waste,” said Brandon Finn, sophomore in LAS and exchange student from South Africa. “We have more community-based things in South Africa. There’s still a lot of consumerism … but not at the American scale.”

According to Leonard, increased levels of consumption are not necessarily increasing people’s levels of happiness. She said as people buy more, they become less satisfied with the things they have.

“It turns out that after your basic levels are met, what actually adds to increased happiness … is the quality of your social relations: (it is) your sense of community, it’s leisure time, it’s having a sense of purpose or meaning in your life and it’s the act of coming together to complete shared goals,” Leonard said.

Jenny Goodwine, senior in Social Work, has already begun to change her patterns of consumption by bringing her own bags to the supermarket, composting regularly and wearing secondhand clothing. After attending the presentation, she wants to do more.

“Now, I’m going to consider what further steps I should do by using my talents and skills and what I am passionate about and bringing that toward the global community,” Goodwine said.

Leonard summed up what she thinks needs to be immediately addressed.

“There are only three core issues we need to deal with: we’re trashing the planet, we’re trashing each other and, increasingly, we are not even having fun,” she said.