As a part of our educational mission at the USGCC, we want to keep you conscious of a variety of ongoing environmental issues. Documentaries are just one great way to broaden your awareness, as they are able to mirror sides of the world not typically seen. While the direction and subject matter of many have been deemed controversial, their value is derived in their ability to spark purposeful dialogue. Conversations incited from such films are keystone in preventing and solving issue of sustainability.
The following list will not only offer members an in-depth look at relevant issues within in our nation, but around the world. These represent just a few of many. Hey they may even offer some inspiration for a new direction for your company!
Producer: Lenoardo DiCaprio
Director(s): Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners
Year: 2007
Length: 58 minutes
Description: The 11th Hour is the last moment when change is possible. The film explores how we have arrived at this moment — how we live, how we impact the earth’s ecosystems, and what we can do to change our course. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolsey and sustainable design experts William McDonough and Bruce Mau in addition to over 50 leading scientists, thinkers and leaders who discuss the most important issues that face our planet and people.
Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity … We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet. —Leonardo DiCaprio
2) Wasteland
Director(s): Lucy Walker, Karen Harley
Year: 2010
Length: 99 minutes
Description: The documentary highlights contemporary artist Vik Muniz journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
3) Genetically Modified Food: Panacea or Poison
Director(s): Josh Shore
Year: 2005
Length: 70 minutes
Description: This informative film offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. It attempts to help the viewer decide if the production of genetically modified food is a panacea for world hunger or a global poison.
Director(s): Martin O’Brien & Robbie Proctor
Year: 2007
Length: 31 minutes
Description: Justicia Now! is a documentary about Chevron Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Northern Ecuadorian region of the Amazon rainforest. It highlights a courageous group of people called Los Afectados (The Affected Ones) who are seeking justice for the ensuing cancer, sickness and death in the largest environmental class action lawsuit in history.
5) Fuel
Director(s): Josh Tickell
Year: 2008
Length: 112 minutes
Description: Director Josh Tickell takes us along for his 11 year journey around the world to find solutions to America’s addiction to oil. He touches on a range of issues such as the shrinking economy, unemployment , our surmounting debt, as well as the auto industry. Tickell goes onto detail a plain to get out of this mess by going green.
Director(s): Oliver Hodge
Year: 2007
Length: 87 minutes
Description: Garbage Warrior tells the epic story of maverick US architect Michael Reynolds and his fight to introduce radically sustainable housing. An extraordinary tale of triumph over bureaucracy, Garbage Warrior is above all an intimate portrait of an extraordinary individual and his dream of changing the world.
7) Flow: For the Love of Water
Producer: Steven Starr
Director(s): Irena Salina
Year: 2008
Length: 1 hour 23 minutes
Description: The film concentrates on the big business of privatization of water infrastructure which prioritizes profits over the availability of clean water for people and the environment. Major businesses depicted in the film are Nestle, The Coca-Cola Company, Suez. and the IMF.
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