Documentaries can Change the World

If you enjoy documentaries you might be changing the world. Documentaries change conversations around important issues and some are so effective at doing so that they make a real-world impact beyond the audience. By bringing issues to light these films raise awareness to problems that we as a society can solve, sometimes the solutions are complex (like Inside Job) and other times they are easier to argue for (like banning the capture and torture of whales). If you want to make the world a better place then go watch some documentaries and tell your friends about it.

Two Columbia University staffers appeared in this exposé of the 2008 financial crisis: Economist/professor Frederic Mishkin and Business School dean Glenn Hubbard. Both men were less than transparent about their professional connections to the finance world. The film reveals that Mishkin wrote a paper about Iceland’s economy without disclosing the $124,000 he’d received from the country’s chamber of commerce. Hubbard, meanwhile, grew combative when questioned about his many consulting clients. A few months after Inside Job’s release, Columbia released much stricter disclosure rules for faculty who work with Wall Street, and the economics department chair credited the movie (which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2011) as a driving force.

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Movie Sets Get a Second Life

The film industry needs to custom build sets and costumes for their productions and more often than not the unique objects get tossed away after filming is done. Filming a movie can cause a lot waste and carbon output so it’s good to see that some people are trying to green the film industry.

ReadySetRecycle.com is a website that allows production companies to list sets, props, and costumes from film sets that they want to sell. They’re located in Canada but there must be something similar in California as well. So if you want unique clothing or things for you house you may want to check out what’s for sale.

We are entertainment industry professionals who are appalled to see thousands of tons of scenery, props and costumes ending up in landfill every year.

So… we’ve created ReadySetRecycle.com a new website where industry professionals can list such items for sale (or giveaway).

Basic listings (one item per listing) are free.

In the first year of operation, Set/Reset processed over 150 tons of scenery.

Set/Reset was a classic win win for its customers, users and the environment.

As the company grew we built up the largest inventory of rental stock in Canada.

Our monthly input was up to 25 tons. From this input, we had only 3% waste!!!

Check out ReadySetRecycle.com

Fresh: A Movie About Good Farming

Last night I went to a screening of Fresh, hosted by the West End Food Co-op in a local park. Most movies made about food recently have dwelled on the fact that industrial farming is killing us – a bad thing no doubt about it. Here’s more on industrial farming.

The good thing about Fresh is that it establishes what’s wrong with farming quickly and succinctly then spends the rest of the film celebrating good farming that’s happening. It’s an inspiring film that will make you love fresh food, crop rotation, and help you see that we can escape the control of industrial farming operations.

The Story of Stuff

stuffThe Story of Stuff is a project by Annie Leonard that chronicles none other than stuff.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The best part – she provides information on how another way is possible!

Watch the movie The Story of Stuff.

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