Beijing Besieged by Waste by Wang Jiuliang: The film director traveled 15k km over two years in 16k km2 large Beijing municipality to film and photograph the city's shameful waste management and the downside of capitalist consumerism within a totalitarian regime.
Main ideas shown in the film > solid waste being manually scavenged > swill oil production > Beijing is a city built on solid waste land fills > consumption accelerates and nobody cares about the consequences
Conclusions: > China is still a deeply unequal country, more so than other developed nations > automated production must be balanced with automated solid waste recycling - manual waste segregation can never keep up with the speed of highly efficient production powered by robots and assembly lines > it would be necessary to balance the movie with the situation in other nations e.g. Germany has dealt so far only with 1/3 of its solid waste dumps and most industrialized nations experienced similar periods of waste mismanagement during the 20th century 60-80ies, when consumption started to increase after WWII - China is not to be blamed, but to be supported to deal with these challenges
Main ideas shown in the film > solid waste being manually scavenged > swill oil production > Beijing is a city built on solid waste land fills > consumption accelerates and nobody cares about the consequences
Conclusions: > China is still a deeply unequal country, more so than other developed nations > automated production must be balanced with automated solid waste recycling - manual waste segregation can never keep up with the speed of highly efficient production powered by robots and assembly lines > it would be necessary to balance the movie with the situation in other nations e.g. Germany has dealt so far only with 1/3 of its solid waste dumps and most industrialized nations experienced similar periods of waste mismanagement during the 20th century 60-80ies, when consumption started to increase after WWII - China is not to be blamed, but to be supported to deal with these challenges