chambershumanfootprint

1. Title, director, and release year?

__Human Footprint **(2008)**__ 1. What is the central argument of the film?

The main argument of the film is to display the impact that each person makes on the world in his/her's lifetime. However, this is only the impact that the average //U.S. citizen// has on the world. It doesn't take into account other countries' impacts. On the other hand, human activity has directly influenced the landscape of 83% of the earth's land.

The film begins to explain how we each leave a footprint on the world, and collectively, this adds up to a lot. It helps spread awareness about how many miles we travel, waste we produce, and fossil fuels we burn. The film follows the lives of a boy and a girl throughout their lifetime and the impact they will both have, beginning with the trees, cotton, and petroleum used to make their diapers.

Human Footprint is visually compelling, since the amount of one resource used (for example, milk cartons), is laid out acorss a parking lot for a scale. On average, 13,056 pints of milk are consumed in one person's lifetime.

Here are some other statistics: In one lifetime, a person will use/consume: 2.3 tons of chicken 1.3 tons of eggs 9,912 lbs of potatoes 5,452 hot dogs 1,056 lbs of sugar 43,371 soda cans 5,067 bananas 156 toothbrushes 198 bottles of shampoo 28,433 showers 13,248 beers 15 computers 10 television sets 12 cars

2. What sustainability problems does the film draw out?

This film could be a revelation to some people who have never consciously thought about their own personal impact on the earth's resources.

For example, when kids become teenagers, they start to become more focused on their appearance. This means showering more frequently, and increasing the use of cosmetics, razors, and hair products. Keeping clean is very resource-intensive and is a sustainability problem. Fashion is also a great sustainability concern. The footprint of manufacturing clothing and its transportation to us is substantial. Fashion is also ever-changing, requiring us to buy more and throw away our old stuff. The average t-shirt last for only about three years. Women (on average) have a larger collection of clothing than men, including shoes.

A person's average impact only becomes greater as they get married and buy a house. Building a new house requires a lot of raw materials and land clearing. And transportation to and from their house requires an automobile. The film also breaks down where the raw materials from the car come from. Car parts come from all across the nation and all across the globe.

4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?

I found that this movie was straight-foward and a relatively benign introduction to the human footprint as a sustainability problem. It raises awareness about how much people consume each day and how it accumulates over a lifetime. For example, for someone who eats a lot of meat, just cutting back on meat to once or twice a week could significantly reduce their impact. I feel that the bottom line of the film is that if we do little things to change our consumption habits, it can really make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? Why?

About halfway through the movie, I started to get the picture and the redundant statistics started to become draining. No critical analysis on why our culture is so wasteful was ever mentioned, but just example after example of wastefulness. This is one reason why I would criticize the film. It really only keeps the viewer interested up to a certain point. After that, it's just quantitative information that starts to become depressing and slightly boring.

6. What audiences does this film best address? Why?

This film is (most likely) targeted for leisurely viewers of national geographic. Therefore, it is not too complex of a movie, but it is definitely thought provoking. This type of film is a good start for people who want to become more sustainability.

7. What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?

I feel like the film could have been more analytical about each group of items consumed. They don't fully address the matrix of problems that are connected to each consumable good. For example, when counting up how much beef/pork/chicken a person eats in their lifetime, they don't include the side affects of industrial farming, such as air and water contamination. Other factors involved in meat production are transportation miles, storage, and electricity used to operate machinery. Also, when they talked about fruit and vegetable consumption, they never mentioned GMOs and other sustainability issues related to this topic.

8. What kinds of action and points of intervention are suggested in the film?

The film only suggests a few ways we could make a difference, such as unplugging electronics and appliances when not being used. This saves a lot of CO2 and electricity costs. It doesn't really focus on solutions as much as I think it should. Perhaps the film expects the viewer to undergo some sort of "awakening" from the film to change his or her consumption habits.

9. What additonal information has this film compelled you to seek out?

1. The film mentions the mining of Coltan, a rare earth metal that is used in most electronics, but has caused a large amount of human suffering in the DRC of Africa. 'Coltan is an abbreviation for 'columbo-tantalite,' which contains the element columbium and tantalum. It is the key ingredient fo cell phones and laptops. This ore is very heat-resistant, which makes it very valuable to manufacturers; however, it has caused wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Eighty percent of the world's coltan reserves are in the DRC. Farmers have been given no other option but to join small coltan-mining brigades. Coltan is found by digging large pits in riverbeds, with armies of miners scraping away dirt to get to the coltan underground. Local men, women and children are forced into mining, fighting and sex work, threatened with torture, rape and murder. Then foreign traders buy the mineral and ship it to only three major companies with the processing capability to turn coltan into tantalum powder for industry. Source: []

2. A part of the movie mentions the footprint of beer and alcohol. This inspired me to research what types of brews are the greenest. Here's what I found:

- Hops (on average) are sprayed 14x a year with approximately 15 pesticides and fungicides. Hops are about 5% of a beer's total volume. An alternative is organic beer. - If you are a vegan, you probably shouldn't be drinking beer, since most brews are filtered with fish bladders (weird!). - Drinking a pint of draught beer from a tap rather than out of a bottle is a greener way to consume beer, since it saves a signifcant amount of packaging.

Source: []