How an actress and a film-maker are changing our view of waste.
When Patricia Arquette took the stage at the 2015 Oscars, she surprised the world by linking two seemingly disparate subjects: the Oscars and poo. When she won Best Supporting Actress, she used her spotlight not to celebrate her achievement but to call attention to a global crisis: sanitation.
She dedicated her award to her ‘heroes, volunteers and experts who have helped me bring ecological sanitation to the developing world with GiveLove.org’. With these words, she pointed to an often overlooked problem – forty per cent of the world’s poorest people live without toilets, and untreated sewage is a significant concern.
Rubén Abruña's documentary ‘Holy Shit’ explores similar themes, including a project by GiveLove in Kenya as an example of the global efforts being made to tackle this issue. Journeying through sixteen cities on four continents, Abruña uncovers what happens to our waste after it leaves our bodies. Could this resource be reused instead of being turned into waste?
From the sewers of Paris to a Chicago sewage treatment plant, the film follows the trail of human faeces – and a question that affects us all: Could our excrement solve the looming fertiliser shortage?
