I am constantly amazed by the possibilities of trash. How can we use it to make our world a better place? How do others use it earn a living? How much do we take our own separation from trash for granted?

And I’m by far from being the only one asking these types of questions! From a PR release from PBS today, if you’re free tomorrow you could do worse than go join the live chat with filmmaker Lucy Walker over on the Independent Lens blog tomorrow (Wednesday, February 9) at 1pm PST.

Filmmaker Lucy Walker will be joining us for a live chat on Wednesday, February 9 at 1 PM (Pacific) to talk about her film Waste Land. The documentary, which airs April 19 on Independent Lens has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The film follows Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, who travels to his native Rio de Janiero to embark on an ambitious mission to create portraits of the local trash pickers out of the garbage they collect the world’s largest landfill.

Don’t have time to join the chat tomorrow?

Go check out the Waste Land’s website here. Learn more about the catadores profiled in the film here. Read the New York Times review of the film here.

 

[Portrait of a catadore by Vik Muniz]I especially love this quote from the film that starts out the NYT review from, Tiao, one of Waste Land’s profiled catadores, “We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials.” I think this simple quote perfectly elucidates trash’s ever revolving status and notes that instead of simply refuse, it’s also full of reusable materials. Instead of what we throw away being the end of the line, it can also be the beginning of someone else’s livelihood, project or dream.

Want to learn more about trash around the world? Go check out another amazing Independent Lens documentary, Garbage Dreams here. Here’s a preview of the film, about Cairo residents who work in one of the world’s largest trash dumps.

And before you chuck that next thing in the trash? Do you know where it’s going? Can it be recycled? Can it be upcycled? Where will it go after the trash bag leaves your house?

I still think that the possibilities of trash are endless, but in learning more from the stories of trash around the world, I begin to think more about the status of trash and of those working with it, the notion that “one (wo)man’s trash is another (wo)man’s treasure,” and how easily so much waste passes through my own hands each day. Should we be doing more to use our trash in creative ways? Should we be doing more to help those in other countries reuse their trash in more creative ways… especially when their country infrastructure lacks recycling and sanitation programs?

And like what happens whenever you start asking questions… the bottom opens up and suddenly your ideas and the possibilities continue to build and build and build until new solutions form and new projects unfold and shiny new collaborations take hold. And, like magic, from what previously seemed to be nothing, a whole new world shows itself to you.

Not totally unlike what happens when you start to take a real look at the trash in front of you.