Showing at this year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival is Trashed, an environmental documentary with Jeremy Irons. This eye-opening documentary looks at the enormous effect waste pollution has on nature, animal life and humans. The film starts off in Saida, a small city in the south of Lebanon where a mountain of trash that is 14 metres high sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. From Lebanon, to Indonesia, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, Irons travels for answers as to why man is producing so much waste that is not biodegradable, what is happening to it and how it’s affecting the life cycle.
The film also sheds light on incinerators and how their use produces a highly toxic chemical called dioxin. The trip that Irons makes to Indonesia to look at some of the birth defects in babies due to this chemical is shocking. The film is beautiful and shocking at the same time. It, however, ends with a message of hope that these dangers which the waste industry is putting the whole planet in risk can be averted by simply using sustainable alternatives.
