Filmmaker attempts to uncover truth about waste

Gig Harbor Film Festival opens Friday at Galaxy Theatres

Susan Schell

of the Gateway

The independent film “Dive!” has nothing to do with the ocean. It has to do with the sea of waste consuming this country.

Food waste. Good, edible food that is tossed into Dumpsters daily while thousands go hungry.

Los Angeles filmmaker Jeremy Seifert will attempt to shine the light on the subject when his film hits the screen during this weekend’s second annual Gig Harbor Film Festival. The 45-minute documentary is Seifert’s first independent film. It will show at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

“It is shocking how much food is being wasted,” Seifert said. “There are close to 90,000 homeless people in (Los Angeles), and when I interviewed people at the L.A. food bank, they told us they were short of food.

“If you took just 1 percent of the food waste in L.A. out of the landfills, it could end that shortage.”

Seifert began “Dumpster diving” about three years ago when his friends told him huge stocks of high-quality food were being tossed away.

“We found out there were mass amounts of food in (a grocery store’s) Dumpster,” he said. “It was Christmas morning every time you went to the Dumpster.

“After a couple months, I started getting angry. There was too much for us to take; a lot was going to landfills. I felt this outrage.”

Seifert was working for a non-profit filmmaking company that profiled the plight of the poor. During three trips to Uganda, he encountered displaced people who were living in camps and suffering from malnutrition.

“There were children eating one meal a day,” he said. “They would eat at night so they wouldn’t have hunger pangs in the morning. Experiencing that, my sense of outrage was even greater. I wanted to do something more than just take the food for myself.”

Seifert decided to tackle the issue as a project for his nighttime documentary film class. His assignment was to create a 10-minute product, but he could only cut it down to about 20 minutes.

“It felt so incomplete,” he said. “I kept asking more and more questions. This is happening on a global scale because our food is being brought in and being shipped out to other countries. Our waste directly impacts people in other countries.”

Seifert kept adding to his work after the class, resulting in the 45-minute version that will debut at this weekend’s festival.

Seifert hopes it will make an impact by making people aware of the problem, which he said is at the heart of the epidemic of environmental destruction. It takes thousands of gallons of water, gas for vehicles to transport the goods and manufacturing plants to package and distribute food products.

“So much land is committed to food production, but if 50 percent of the food is being thrown out, the cost to the environment is enormous,” he said. “It’s like slapping creation in the face. Now this free-range, organic chicken is rotting in the Dumpster. Grocery stores need to redistribute it and get it to the people that need it. Or at least compost it or give it to livestock.”

He said that’s a matter for communities and churches to coordinate.

Organic material deposited into landfills releases methane gas into the atmosphere which is more potent than carbon dioxide, Siefert said. He added that one of the underlying problems is America’s “throw-away culture.”

“There’s always something new and flashy, and everything goes to the trash. What kind of society wastes this much food? A society that doesn’t value the earth and what it produces.

“To waste it is to not value it. This is the most insidious form of waste.”

Seifert said he hopes film viewers will make the connection of food waste to the environment and, if anything, cut down on the waste in their homes. He said he was a little anxious about how it will be perceived, because it’s a low-budget film. He will be in town for the festival this weekend.

“I’m honored that it will be seen by people, and I hope it motivates them,” he said. “I’m looking forward to experiencing it with people I don’t know.

“Film is the most powerful story-telling medium that we have, but the most difficult to achieve and do right. You have to take in so many forms of art, color, dialogue and music. They all have their own forms and dynamics.”

Reach Lifestyles Coordinator and reporter Susan Schell at 253-853-9240 or by e-mail at susan.schell@gateline.com.