“And then the second thing that I would say that’s really easy to change is to give up single-use disposable items, the things that are made to last forever, but you’re only going to use them for like, five minutes. Like plastic spoons and cups, and take-out containers. I haven’t used that stuff in three years, and, you know, it doesn’t affect my life at all.”

It is precisely this type of single-use disposable plastic that drew Jen and Grant to the work of Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based artist whose photography illustrates the massive amount of plastic waste created by North Americans every day. The documentary also features insightful interviews with Captain Charles Moore, the man credited with discovering the infamous Pacific Garbage Patch in the middle of the ocean.

Since its debut, The Clean Bin Project has screened at film festivals and community events far and wide, and many viewers have even been inspired to start their own zero-waste challenges.

“We’ve seen a number of Clean Bin Projects pop up across the country, with people doing video diaries and writing blogs about it, whether they’re going to do it for a week, or some people are even doing it for a year. We’ve seen families competing against other families, and an entire community in Kimberley, B.C., did a community Clean Bin Project Challenge, which was amazing,” says Jen.

This type of community action is exactly what she and Grant were hoping for with the creation of their first documentary. Despite all of the challenges, Jen says they wanted to show people that it’s possible to live waste-free, and to make greener choices without sacrificing a certain standard of living.

“We’d watched lots of environmental documentaries, but we were still feeling that sometimes the messages were so important, but they were presented in a way that really left you feeling hopeless,” says Jen.

“We wanted to make something that kind of inspired people,
and made them want to change.”

images courtesy of The Clean Bin Project

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