About this project

RACING TO ZERO will bring a new perspective to the garbage problem confronting the world today and the growing threat that this imposes on the environment itself. For more than a year we have been actively researching the damaging affect of human waste on the environment, how to explain what is happening and the steps being taken to find solutions.

Americans are still prodigious wasters and in 2009 threw out roughly 243 million tons of trash or about 4.34 pounds of garbage per person per day...and 132 million tons ended up in landfill.

Our 60 minute documentary is an awakening and an admonition and we are the targeted audience. The original title, TRASH24, has now morphed into RACING TO ZERO which suggests a better operating framework for the questions that we are asking and the solutions being implemented by specific cities. Can we achieve the eventual goal, ZERO garbage to landfill in the foreseeable future? Everyone is involved and the pressure is on. How much time do we have?

RACING TO ZERO exhorts us to change our relationship to our waste. It's a full time job to consider how our garbage is going to impact the whole environment, we are finding out that everything that people threw away into the landfills 40 or 50 years ago didn't degrade and that includes plastic, glass, paper, steel, everything. Raw organics biodegrade 50% and the rest is there forever. We must understand its potential for reinvention while recognizing its value as a Resource.

"Over 300 colleges and universities started food scrap compost collection programs in the last 6 years and city after city is joining the movement."

We will examine today's cultural practices in terms of consumption, preparation, use and production.

We want people to understand that what they buy, use, save and discard is different from the material remains that represent what they bought, used, saved and discarded. Why do we buy what we buy?

However, there is hope, but we need to first, fully understand the problem. The story will follow the collective efforts of three West Coast cities that are successfully taking these necessary steps: increased recycling, inventive repurposing, composting to recycle organics back to the earth where nature and science interact, and changing patterns of production and consumption. Diminishing nonrecyclables have already radically reduced the amount of garbage that is sent to landfills.

Compost has inspired at least 300 cities in the US to participate, energy from related sources is being explored, incineration is diminishing and countless ideas for reuseable products are emerging as small businesses, globally.

Our leading characters will guide us through the various aspects of the story: William Rathje, archaeologist, anthropologist, scholar and inventor of the science of Garbology, William Schaeffer, an agronomist and farmer, champion of the values of compost. In their travels around the countryside and conversations with other scholars and experts they will explain the the story of garbage, its past, present, and future.

It will become clear that above all we must make major changes in our patterns of living. This is everyone's dilemma but we have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference.

Please help us by contributing to the development of this film which we hope to complete by the fall of 2013.

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