This screening was also followed by a very interesting discussion. Panelists, Kevin Drew, Residential Zero Waste Coordinator at the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), and Bradley Angel, Executive Director at GreenAction, had some very eye-opening things to say about recycling:

“When you burn this stuff (trash), no matter how state-of-the-art, no matter how conscientious the company, you are getting emissions of the most toxic substances known to science- that are having a profound effect on our population worldwide.”
-Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA)

“The fact of the matter is, companies are producing stuff for which there is no solution and they take no responsibility. And it’s left in the hands of Kevin (San Francisco Department of the Environment) and your tax dollars to solve that problem…If you can’t recycle it, if you don’t have a plan for it, you shouldn’t be producing it in the first place.”
-Bradley Angel, Executive Director, GreenAction

“We really shouldn’t be shipping things a long way away, we should be trying to live locally to the extent that we shouldn’t expect to get avocados year-round or other things, until very recently, we didn’t get year-round. Living within our means from a local ecosystem sense is where you’re going to find the right answer.”
-Kevin Drew, Residential Zero Waste Coordinator, San Francisco Department of the Environment

“If the waste pickers in Cairo can do eighty percent, I think San Francisco can do eighty percent as well.”
-Neil Tangri

Garbage Dreams tells the story of garbage pickers in Cairo, Egypt who are among the best recyclers on the planet

Community Cinema Charleston (South Carolina) distributed free recycling bins provided by the city, had a discussion about the Charleston Green Plan, and how to improve recycling in the area.

At Community Cinema Sheboygan our facilitator, Nate Lowe an assistant professor at Lakeland College, teaches a senior level course on environment and consumption. He is also the faculty adviser for the student led group Eco-Friends. He was able to speak about some of their success in getting our local community to begin recycling programs. In 2002, during a trip to Egypt, Nate visited Makattam, the largest recycling village in Cairo where a UNESCO school teaches young Zabbaleen women how to recycle thrown-away fabrics into marketable items. Lowe pointed out that 90% of Cairo is Arabic and 10% is Christian. There were comments addressing concern for the Zabbaleen particularly regarding the statistic that 1 in 5 children die from complications due to the garbage environment and were encouraged to hear that The Gates Foundation donated one million dollars to their recycling school. A public works representative who attended the screening said the average amount recycled in America is about 36% and Sheboygan recycles 24%. He emphasized the severity of the landfill situation in the area by revealing that our landfills are not decomposing like we thought they would and predicted that in 40-50 years we would be mining our own landfills for resources.

Garbage Dreams airs in April on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings)

At Community Cinema Chicago we had people sitting on the floor in front of the first row, and standing throughout the entire film in the back. We must have turned away over 50 people. The discussion following the film was amazing. Elise Zelichowski from the ReBuilding Exchange moderated. She kicked off the discussion by asking via applause vote how many people in the audience thought that Chicago’s recycling program was poor. That got a resounding round of applause. There was much discussion about improving the efficiency of our city’s recycling and garbage collection. And about correcting the city’s stringent plan for community gardening in vacant lots. One panelist was Ken Dunn, Founder and Director of the Resource Center. Ken is considered Chicagos pre-eminent authority on all things environmental. When Ken said that he learned much from the Zeballeens methods and attitudes, it really meant a lot. Erin Kennedy from SCARCE teaches recycling at schools and community groups across the broad Chicago area. She spoke about what it takes to change habits. The third panelist was Clissold Elementary 7th grader Alana Hurley. She said that at a very young age, she took her parents concern for the environment to heart and was determined to put her concern for the planet into widespread practice. She got her school to start a recycling club and now many students are involved in the effort.

And, at Community Cinema Steamboat Springs (“Ski Town USA”) in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains the Bud Werner Memorial Library, Yampa Valley Sustainability Council, and Yampa Valley Recycles presented a free screening of the documentary Garbage Dreams. Along with Home ReSource, all three groups set up informational tables, including a fairly large Recycling 101 display, for people to discuss and peruse before the film. YVSC then did a short presentation about their Zero Waste initiative at the Steamboat Ski Area and large events around town, plus the upcoming Talking Green event. Yampa Valley Recycles then did a short, informative talk about the state of Steamboat Springs recycling and took questions from the audience.

Audience members and partner organizations mingle and share at the Garbage Dreams event in St. Louis.

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. Back in January, Producing Partner KETC in St. Louis, MO, screened the Independent Lens film Garbage Dreams at the not-to-be-missed Missouri History Museum for over 300 local folks. The audience learned that St. Louis recycles about 35% of its waste and that over the past 30 years, St. Louis has made a concerted effort to increase that percentage. As one audience member observed, “It looks funny to see soda cans in a regular waste can and not in a recycle container and we don’t use just one side of the paper.” Watch an interview below with one of our other St. Louis event partners who is working on garbage, solid waste, and recycling education locally.

Find more videos like this on Community Cinema Series St. Louis

Filmmaker Mai Iskander

Filmmaker Mai Iskander sat down in January with Kojo Nnamdi on WAMU in Washington, DC to talk about global environmental challenges and how the “Zabaleen” — or garbage collectors — has captured the world’s attention for their startlingly efficient, eco-friendly, and low-tech methods of recycling.
Listen to the full interview [20 minutes] >>

The New York Times’ Jeannette Catsoulis reviewed Garbage Dreams. She says, “…this new film digs deeper into the politics of a life that few would choose but many depend on.” Read her full review.

At one of our first events for Garbage Dreams in Saratoga Springs, NY at the Saratoga Springs Public Library, our partner organization for the free screening of Garbage Dreams was the local chapter of GAIA, The Global Anti-Incerator Alliance, The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Our speaker from GAIA was Tracy Frisch, who is active in several other nonprofit organizations in the area. We also had as audience members a husband and wife who own a local Egyptian products store who were brought up in Cairo.

In sunny San Diego, California at the  San Diego Public Library, Garbage Dreams was the best screening of the season according to our partners at the library.  It was the biggest audience so far, and we had an excellent speaker follow the film who kept more than half the audience in their seats for Q&A. The film presented a wonderful opportunity to discuss grassroots activism and how to mobilize now on recycling issues in San Diego.  We had press coverage from the the San Diego Reader.

Read on for more event outcomes and a chance to win a gift from The Recycling School in Cairo!

Michael Wonsidler works for both Zero Waste San Diego and the local county waste department. Zero Waste San Diego is a local grassroots group that advocates for increased recycling awareness and better alternatives to current recycling practices. Michael’s combined knowledge of government action and grassroots perspective made him the perfect speaker to engage the audience in meaningful discussion about the issues presented in Garbage Dreams. Like most cities, San Diego constantly works to improve its recycling capacity.

“I’ve always wondered what happens with my trash. It seems to magically disappear each week and I don’t really have any idea what happens to it or what impact it has on my community. Well that all changed last night. What I learned at the HoustonPBS Community Cinema screening of Garbage Dreams was fascinating.” That was Julie Coan’s reaction to her Garbage Dreams event in Houston where they  recycle about 22 percent of their solid waste. Houston’s recycling rate is on the rise, but they can probably learn some tricks and procedures from cities like San Antonio, Portland, and San Francisco who are America’s municipal “Recycling Stars.”

Austria is the leading recycler in the European Union with about 60 percent of waste products being recycled. The United States recycles about 32 percent of its waste. At the Beijing dump, scavengers earn three times the monthly salary of college professors. Scavengers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico earn three times the minimum wage, putting them in the top 5 percent of income earners in that city.

Learn more interesting facts and consider some of the challenging questions or activities in our Discussion Guide (PDF, 2.5M). [Consider not printing the discussion guide. You can view PDF documents on your computer, laptop, Palm, Blackberry, iPhone, or other smart device.]

The film makes it clear. Now is the time for recycling. In this video, Mai Iskander and Adham, one of the young subjects from the film, take us on a tour of a typical American trash dumpster:

Our national partners create unique ways for audiences to learn more about recycling, sustainability and environmental education. Global Alliance For Incinerator Alternatives is a worldwide alliance of more than 500 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 80 countries whose ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. The Cloud Institute works to ensure that innovative curricula is available to educators in the K-12 school systems to prepare young people for the shift toward a sustainable future. Working Films leverages the power of storytelling through documentary film to advance struggles for social, economic, and environmental justice, human and civil rights.

Garbage Dreams airs in April 2010 on PBS (check local listings). If you attended one of our free Garbage Dreams preview events, please comment below and let us know what you thought. One commenter will receive a small gift bag made from 100% recycled materials from The Recycling School in Cairo, Egypt.

Al Gore presents filmmaker Mai Iskander with the REEL Current Award for extraordinary insight into global issues at the 2009 Nashville Film Festival.

Saturday, Community Cinema welcomed more than 125 people into Nashville Public Library’s downtown branch auditorium for a screening of Garbage Dreams. The event was a homecoming of sorts; Mai Iskander and her film were the talk of last year’s Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) when Al Gore presented Mai with the REEL Current Award for extraordinary insight into global issues. Because of Garbage Dreams, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million to benefit the Zaballeen, the “garbage people” profiled in the film. When announcing the grant, Garbage Dreams’ producers credited Nashville Film Festival and the REEL Current Award with part of the film’s success. As NaFF Director Sallie Mayne said, “We feel like a small but important part of its journey.”

Attendees make crafts from recycled materials including bottle caps that were made into refrigerator magnets.

Guests at the Community Cinema event attended a reception in the library’s art gallery, where they were invited to make crafts from recycled materials. We collected bottle caps from friends and the owner of The Basement, a popular live music venue. Guests made colorful refrigerator magnets from the previous night’s bottle caps, proving that trash can be beautiful. We also found a use for our leftover Community Cinema postcards; with some scissors and magnetic sheets, letters from the cards made interesting, imperfect magnetic poetry kits.

Our panel featured Sherif Barsoum, director of International Student and Scholar Services at Vanderbilt University; Jeffrey Ezell, education coordinator at Metro Beautification and Environment Commission; and Jennifer Hackett, recycling coordinator for Sustain VU, Vanderbilt University’s recycling program.

Each year, Sherif takes a student group to his native home, Cairo, where they visit the garbage village featured in the film. Sherif’s in-laws were with us at the screening, after arriving from Cairo late the night before. Moderator Jonathan Martin, co-anchor of WSMV’s Channel 4 News Today/Saturday, kept the discussion calm when a local environmental group leader unexpectedly took a seat on the panel, insisting he’d been invited, and used the opportunity to criticize our local and state government’s solid waste program.

Community Cinema is presented by Nashville Public Television, Nashville Public Library, Hands On Nashville, and new series partner Nashville Film Festival.

- Allison Inman
Regional Outreach Coordinator

Harry Hayes talks with audience members after the Community Cinema screening and panel discussion.

Speakers Harry Hayes, director of the city’s Solid Waste Management Department; Dr. H.C Clark, professor at Rice University; and Cindy Yepez of the Houston Green Scene.

Houston recycles about 22 percent of its solid waste. While the number shows an improvement, we still lag behind cities like Portland (63 percent) and San Francisco (72 percent). Harry Hayes, director of the city’s Solid Waste Management Department, said that one of the things needed to increase the number of people recycling in Houston is legislation. He talked about how people in San Francisco are fined if they don’t recycle properly. He said if people are really concerned about recycling they need to contact their elected officials.

One audience member asked what he could do to implement a recycling plan in his apartment building, since there was no real precedent for him to follow. Mr. Hayes’ answer was that there was no “curbside” pick up currently for apartment building, so his suggestion was to speak with the owner’s of the apartment building about possibly hiring a private company to collect and haul the recyclables away.

Another major concern was the question of how to encourage others to begin recycling when they are so used to throwing their garbage away with no thought or concern as to what happens to it. Our other two guest speakers, Cindy Yepez of the Houston Green Scene, and Dr. H.C Clark, professor at Rice University, both commented on the economic advantages of recycling. Businesses that used leftover home improvement materials to create new, stylish home good (countertops for instance) were booming. There are even more jobs and an even bigger market in the collecting and reusing of recyclables.

After the panel discussion many of the more vocal audience members hung back and chatted with us and our panelists. Some wanted to start their own recycling plans in their neighborhoods and wondered where to start while others just thanked us for providing an arena to bring these important issues to our communities. I have a feeling after watching Garbage Dreams and participating in the discussion, they won’t look at trash the same way ever again… I know I won’t.

Manar Hindi
Assistant Coordinator of Community Cinema

Audience members and partner organizations mingle and share at the Garbage Dreams event in St. Louis.

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. Last Thursday night, Producing Partner KETC in St. Louis, MO, screened the Independent Lens film Garbage Dreams at the not-to-be-missed Missouri History Museum for over 300 local folks. Sydney Meyer of KETC shares her experiences at the event below.

January 14, 2010 was a great night for passionate recycling people in St. Louis. The free screening of Garbage Dreams drove over 300 people to the Missouri History Museum. The film is a story about the Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”), a peasant community whose only source of income is to recycle trash collected from the streets of Cairo – a city with no municipal waste-disposal system.

The film touched members of the audience as they watched the boys work hard to make life as good as possible and aspire to live a better life like they see Westerners enjoying. One panel member wondered what would happen to the Zaballeen –would they become wards of the state if newer recycling methods replaced their outdated ways? The film in her eyes was a wonderful way to put a human face to trash or the “people side of trash” to quote her exactly. Another provoking question concerning the human side of trash that came up was “Do people who see recycling and reusing as a moral responsibility not to waste become the ‘always recycler’ opposed to the ‘sometime or not at all recycler’?”

Some studies confirm that moral responsibility does make a difference in the way people recycle, according to Katy Mike of the Missouri Botanical Gardens EarthWays Center which conducts recycling education programs. Aside from the human side of the story, which by the way reminded me of how much I take for granted, there were the other questions of the night: “Why is it hard for people to recycle?”; “Are we doing any better than 30 years ago?”; “What are St. Louis’ statistics in recycling?” and “What do we still need to do to get better at recycling after we leave here tonight?”. Good questions but not easy to answer in one evening!

Useful materials that help now, and will one day be recycled and used in another way.

Our panelists and facilitator did a great job and rose to the occasion to address the issues- not a piece of cake in my eyes. But we did learn that St. Louis recycles about 35% of its waste and that over the past 30 years, St. Louis has made a concerted effort to increase that percentage. As one audience member observed, “It looks funny to see soda cans in a regular waste can and not in a recycle container and we don’t use just one side of the paper.”

So we are more aware and better, but still are we really committed? Do we take charge of everything that comes in our house and how we will dispose of it? Are adults good models for our children? Will teaching children to recycle at a young age make them more likely to recycle throughout their lifetimes?  More questions……

But we did leave the night with a few practical ways to keep on the reuse, reduce, and recycle pathway.  Take home the fliers in the lobby on “Reduce—What You Can Do” provided by Missouri Botanical Gardens EarthWays Education Programs (and be sure to recycle them after you’ve incorporated the tips into your daily life). Buy recycled products so there will be a market for recycled items. Compost food waste and encourage schools to compost and grow gardens. Stop using Styrofoam products! Buy a water filter instead of bottled water. And the most important practice source reduction: reduce the waste we generate in the first place. Consume less.

Guess we all left feeling like there was more we could do….but at least I took the pamphlets home and I will try to add another recycling habit to my repertoire– change is the hardest thing but we need to do it for our country and our earth. Oh! and I do plan to volunteer at the Missouri History Museum’s Swap-O-Rama-Rama on April 10 which will recycle old clothing into new, re-deigned outfits or make stuffing out of the “lost causes” pile!

Michael Wonsidler, who works for both the local county waste department and Zero Waste San Diego a local grassroots group that advocates for increased recycling awareness and better alternatives to current recycling practices, spoke following the film.  His combined knowledge of government action and grassroots perspective made him the perfect speaker to engage the audience in meaningful discussion about the issues presented in Garbage Dreams. The audience truly benefited from discussing the film afterward with an expert in the recycling field right here in San Diego where we may not quite have garbage dreams, but we’re certainly dreaming about recycling more and more.

Nabil, 18 years old, one of the teenage boys featured in Garbage Dreams

Our January Community Cinema selection, Garbage Dreams, asks you to think very deeply about garbage (and recycling it). Cairo, Egypt’s Zabaleen are mostly Coptic Christians who provide garbage collection cheaply or for free, making a living by sorting through the trash they collect, and selling the metal, plastic, paper, glass, and other materials to recyclers. Some items are set aside for repair and reuse; food waste is given to the pigs and goats.

The Zaballeen live on the outskirts of Cairo, in Mokattam, the main setting for Garbage Dreams. The garbage is collected by the men, and brought here where it is piled into large open rooms or sheds and sorted by the women and children. Families tend to specialize in sorting certain types of materials, such as glass or paper, and particular families take charge of preparing that material for recycling. It is estimated that the Zaballeen recycle about 80 percent of the solid waste they collect.

Don’t miss your chance to see Garbage Dreams this week at a free community screening event near you!

Grand Junction, Colorado
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Mesa County Libraries, Central Library
530 Grand Ave.

Hayward, California
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Hayward Public Library Main Library
835 C Street
Hayward, CA 94541

Tucson, Arizona
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Joel D. Valdez Main Library
101 N. Stone Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85701

See Garbage Dreams this week!

Miami, Florida
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Florida International University – Maidique Campus
11200 SW 8th St. - Graham Center (GC) 140
Miami, FL. 33199

Tucson, Arizona
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM
Quincie Douglas Branch Library
1585 E. 36th St.
Tucson, AZ 85713

St. Louis, Missouri
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Missouri History Museum
5700 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, MO

Tucson, Arizona
Friday, January 15, 2010 at 4:00 PM
Miller-Golf Links Branch Library
9640 E. Golf Links Rd.
Tucson AZ 85730

Ithaca, New York
Friday, January 15, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Henry St. John Building – Suite 103
301 S. Geneva St.
(corner of Clinton & Geneva Streets)

Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:00 PM
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St.

Boston, Massachusetts
Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:00 PM
Boston Public Library- Rabb Lecture Hall
700 Boylston St., Copley Sq.

Washington, D.C.
Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 3:00 PM
Washington DC Jewish Community Center
1529 16th Street, NW (at Q)

Find all upcoming events listed here. The list is update frequently, so be sure to bookmark it.