The Berkeley, California resident has been obsessed with stuff for more than 20 years - both good stuff that is thrown out and toxic stuff that poisons the planet and its people.

　　安妮·雷纳德为废物而着迷已经有20多年了，无论被当废物扔掉的好东西，还是危害地球和人类的有毒物质。她致力于改变美国的乱扔文化。

　　Early awareness

　　Leonard grew up in Seattle, Washington, spending her summers in the forests of the Cascade Mountains. With her school promoting environmental issues, she grew concerned about the increasing numbers of clear cuts - areas where all the trees have been cut down. So it's no wonder she wanted to be a public lands and forest activist. The interest in stuff came later.

　　安妮·雷纳德在华盛顿州西雅图市长大，暑假通常在喀斯开山脉的大森林里度过。因此，她希望成为一名为保护公共土地和森林而奔走的人，也就不足为奇了。

　　"It wasn't until I went to college in New York City that I became obsessed with garbage," she says.

　　雷纳德说：“我对皆伐区、也就是全部树木被砍伐的空地日益增多感到非常不安。不过我直到去纽约市上大学之后，才开始对废物着迷。”

　　Walking to class at Barnard College, it was hard not to notice the shoulder-high piles of garbage bags stacked along the city streets. Wondering what was inside, Leonard started what was to become a lifelong habit. She opened a garbage bag.

　　走在去巴纳德学院上课的路上，很难不注意到街道两旁一堆堆齐肩高的垃圾。雷纳德很好奇垃圾袋里究竟装了什么东西。于是她打开了一个垃圾袋看。而这从此成为她终生的习惯。

　　Nearly half the trash inside was paper. Her mind made the immediate connection to the clear cut areas of her beloved Northwest forests where the trees had been cut down for lumber and pulp. Her next stop was New York City's 890-hectare landfill, to see what else was being thrown away. She found mounds of appliances, shoes, clothing, electronics, books and food packaging as far as she could see.

　　垃圾袋里近一半东西是废纸，这突然使她联想到她所喜爱的西北森林中的皆伐区，那里的树木被砍下来做成木材和纸浆。接下来，她来到纽约市890公顷的废物填埋场，看看那里倾倒了什么东西。放眼望去，是一堆堆的器具、鞋子、衣物、电器、书籍和食物包装等。

　　"I was really struck by both the scale of it - how could we have created a society that is based on and dependent on so much destruction of resources, but also the secrecy of it," says Leonard. "How could I have gone all the way until I was nearly 20 before I'd ever been to a dump?"

　　她说：“我真的被眼前这些废物惊呆了，我们怎么会创造出这么一个以摧毁资源为基础并严重依赖于摧毁资源的社会呢？我怎么会等到快20岁的时候，才去一个垃圾场看看呢？”

　　Life-changing visit

　　That visit to the dump changed Leonard's life. For her senior undergraduate project, she wrote a paper on why New York City should not burn garbage in municipal incinerators and suggested alternatives for disposal. At Cornell University graduate school, she studied city and regional planning with a focus on garbage.

　　到废物填埋场的这段经历，改变了雷纳德的一生。她后来进入康奈尔大学研究生院，学习城市和地区规化，主功方向就是废物处理。

　　Leonard spent the next 10 years with various environmental groups in Washington, lobbying for recycling programs and tougher regulations on trash disposal. But her success in Congress had an unexpected negative result in corporate boardrooms.

　　之后10年，雷纳德在首都华盛顿不同的环保组织里工作，为各种回收计划以及更严格的废物处理法进行游说。但她在国会取得的成功却在企业董事会中产生了意想不到的负面后果。

　　To avoid the new laws, Leonard says, many companies started to ship their regular and hazardous waste overseas. So she moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to work on a global campaign to stop the export of waste from the richest countries to the poorest. Her job was to track the waste from the United States to where it ended up in Africa, Latin America, and East and South Asia.

　　雷纳德说，为了规避新法律，很多公司开始把他们的常规的和有毒废物运到海外。因此，她搬到瑞士日内瓦，参与一项全球性运动，以制止世界上最富有的国家向最贫穷的国家输出废物。

　　Trash Investigator

　　"I went to Bangladesh, for example, to interview farmers who had taken fertilizer that was contaminated with our hazardous waste and spread it on their farms," she says. "I went to South Africa under apartheid where United States companies were sending very toxic mercury waste that was dumped in a black township there where the people were not able to leave and had to use the water that had become contaminated for drinking and bathing and some cooking."

　　她说：“我去孟加拉国采访了一些农民，他们农田里撒的农药被我们的有毒废物所污染。我也去过种族隔离制度下的南非，美国公司把含汞的剧毒废物输出到那里。这些废物被倾倒在一个黑人小镇，那里的人们无处可去，不得不饮用被污染的水，用这种水来洗浴，做饭。”

　　Leonard's 10 years as an investigator took her to dumps, mines, factories and sweatshops in 40 countries. She learned about the life cycle of every manufactured product she could - from cell phones to toothbrushes - and concluded that the world needed to know that cycle, too.

　　Considering how much of the world's trash comes from the United States, Leonard decided that the fight for a solution had to be centered there. So she settled in Berkeley, California, and started an educational campaign. She produced a 20-minute video for YouTube called "The Story of Stuff." She figured if she got 50,000 views, it would be a success.

　　在知道世界上有多少垃圾是来自美国后，雷纳德认定，要解决这个问题，必须以美国为中心。于是，她在加州伯克利安顿下来，并开始了一场教育运动。她制作了一部长20分钟的录像，称为“东西的故事”，并把它放在Youtube上。她当时认为，观看次数只要有5万次，就算成功。

　　"To my complete shock, I got 50,000 views in a day. We are now at over 10 million views from people in over 223 countries and territories, according to Google Analytics."

　　雷纳德说：“令我深感震惊的是，观看次数一天就达到了5万次。根据谷歌的分析，现在，在223个国家和地区，观看这部录像的超过1千万人次。”

　　'The Story of Stuff'

　　Leonard also received more than 100,000 emails asking for more specific information. That's when she decided to put it all in a book, also called "The Story of Stuff." In it, she outlines where stuff comes from and where is goes. Looking at the five different stages, she followed products from extraction all the way to disposal.

　　雷纳德还收到了10万多个电子邮件，请求她提供更具体的信息。因此，她决定把这些信息汇总到她所写的《东西的故事》一书中。

　　Leonard has been accused of being anti-capitalist and anti-stuff, but insists that, actually, she is pro-stuff, although, she admits, most of her possessions are second-hand.

　　一些人指责雷纳德反对资本主义、反对物质的东西。但是她坚称，实际上，她支持物质的东西，尽管她承认，她的大部分东西都是二手货。

　　"I want us to appreciate and value and have reverence for our stuff more. I want us to look at something, whether it's an electronic gadget or a piece of furniture or a piece of clothing, and think about the effort and the energy and the material and the work that went into making that thing."

　　她说：“我希望我们能更加赏识、珍惜并尊重自己的东西。我希望当我们看到一个东西时， 无论是一台电器、一件家具，还是一件衣服，都能想想制作这些东西时所投入的原料和精力。”

　　As she travels around the country, speaking at colleges, conferences and houses of worship, the 45-year old activist is often asked how she can maintain a hopeful outlook. She says it's because she is convinced that the toxic trash situation doesn't have to be as dire as it is now.

　　雷纳德走遍全美各地，在大学里、会议上以及敬拜场所发表演讲。人们常常问这位45岁的活动人士，既然了解所有这些情况，她如何还能保持一个乐观的态度。雷纳德说，这是因为她确信，有毒垃圾问题其实可以不必这么严重。

　　She points to emerging science fields such as biomimicry, where industries imitate nature to design more sustainable and healthier products. She also touts the burgeoning green chemistry movement, which tries to minimize the generation and use of toxic materials. But mostly, she says, she's hopeful that growing public awareness and desire for a new approach will bring about the changes she'd like to see.

　　雷纳德提到在仿生学这类新兴科学领域，一些相关产业模仿自然，设计出更具可持续性和更健康的产品。她还盛赞一个新兴运动，即把有毒物质的产生和使用减少到最低限度的绿色化学运动。但最主要的是，她希望随着公众不断增强环保意识，越来越渴望采取新的解决办法，她所希望看到的变化将会出现。