Sustainability: Trash

Brooklyn based artist Vik Muniz grew up poor in Brazil. This film follows him as he returns to Rio de Janeiro, specifically to Jardim Gramacho, or "Garbage Garden." The world's largest landfill, it receives 7,000 tons daily, an astonishing 70% of all Rio's garbage. "We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials," says Tiao, a catadore, or trash picker who thinks of himself and his fellows as environmentalists. The pickers have a union, which has built a recycling center, medical clinic, day care and skills-training centers, and community lending library of discarded books for their members.

It is the Age of Plastic. It's cheap, practical, and everywhere. But is it dangerous? Viewers are taken on a journey around the globe, from the Moroccan Sahara to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, from a factory in China to the Alps to reveal the far-flung reaches of the plastic problem. Interviews with experts in biology, pharmacology, and genetics shed light on the perils of plastic to the environment and expose the truth of how plastic affects the body, and the health of future generations.

Inspired by a curiosity about society's careless habit of sending food straight to landfills, the multi award-winning documentary Dive! follows filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and friends as they dumpster dive in the back alleys and gated garbage receptacles of Los Angeles' supermarkets. In the process, they salvage thousands of dollars worth of good, edible food, resulting in an eye-opening documentary that is equal parts entertainment, guerilla journalism, and call to action.