a while ago i found an extremely well presented and powerful illustration of consumption in america, the story of stuff.

i was reminded of it while going through some of the photographic work of chris jordan, who put’s our consumption into a visual scale. one of his huge prints shows almost half a million cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. others illustrate breast augmentations, plastic bottles, cigarettes, incarcerations and more.

if you haven’t already, check out chris’ running the numbers and watch the story of stuff here.