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America Recycles Day is November 15th, and with most people staying indoors, what better way to pass the time than to watch a few movies/TV shows? Many shows and movies focus on this topic and its effects on the world, but The Day After Tomorrow, WALL-E, and Terra Nova are perfect for celebrating America Recycles Day. They are stories about the effects of ignoring global warming and letting the world go to waste from not recycling.
While these stories are fictional, they can leave an underlying impact on the viewers. Many articles pop up when Googling “Can The Day After Tomorrow actually happen?” along with scientific articles on whether it is a possibility. WALL-E and Terra Nova show the future of the world we are currently living in if we continue at the rate we are going now.
These stories make the humans actually leave the earth in order to survive the toxicity of the remaining environment. Looking back on the history behind America Recycles Day, it was actually started by the state of Texas in 1994 and was changed to America Recycles Day in 1997. The first national press conference was themed “Buy Recycled,” and they hosted a store for products made into something different after being recycled.
The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) hosted a raffle at the conference that the winner would get an “American Green Dream Home” made out of recycled materials and energy-efficient items. Science fiction stories have a way of pulling viewers’ attention towards an authentic topic, hopefully making people more interested in recycling and trying their best to reduce their carbon footprint instead of pushing aside the movie as pure fiction. Below are three movies to watch on America Recycles Day to pique your own curiosity about recycling and global warming.
Global Warming And Climate Shifting
The Day After Tomorrow follows the government process behind finding out that a major climate shift is happening. This results from shifting ocean currents after an abundance of fresh water is pumped into the saltwater ocean.
We also follow Jack Hall, the man who created the weather model the government is now using to help predict an international storm. Jack’s son is in New York, a territory within the United States that is too far into the storm to save. Jack, along with his coworkers, start the trek from Washington, D.C. to Manhattan.
Backed By Science
Obviously, this exact situation is a little far-fetched, but the science behind it is not wrong. According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, having an entire climate shift to the degree that the movie does within that timeframe is impossible, along with the look-a-like hurricane starting in the artic. Also, WHOI says that when referring to an “abrupt climate shift” in science today, scientists typically mean within a decade compared to taking place over hundreds of thousands of years.
But, the Atlantic current IS slowing down because of global warming. The resulting weather is not as extreme as the movie, but man-made global warming is certainly a factor in why the current is slowing down. In fact, scientists have found that a climate change like The Day After Tomorrow did happen 30,000 years ago with a global cooling event correlating with the change of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Honestly, it’s pretty cool to read academic science articles about your favorite movie and learn about the science behind the plot.
Stories To Annunciate America Recycles Day
Terra Nova and WALL-E actually have similar ideas behind their stories. Terra Nova is about a family from the year 2149, where the air is so toxic you have to walk around with gas masks. As a family, you can only have two kids to keep the population down, reducing waste and food needs. The population began transporting groups of necessary members to build a new society eighty-five million years in the past. WALL-E is about the only surviving robot left on earth still cleaning up the garbage that people had left.
This trash is overcrowding the earth, WALL-E actually builds his own skyscrapers with the garbage squares he makes. The humans had left to start life on a space ship that was supposed to be for five years. WALL-E meets EVE, a new robot looking for life on earth, and follows her back up to the space ship that dropped her off. When the space ship takes off, it docks back up to the main ship where the humans have become unhealthy. They no longer walk or do anything for themselves.
Both of these stories leave humans as the antagonists against the earth. They litter and have a blatant disregard for the earth’s resources and decide to abandon earth instead of making it better. In fact, this isn’t that far off from our current state. National Geographic reported in 2018 that there might be a hotel orbiting the Earth in 2022. Recycling is especially important in America because the average American produces three times the amount of trash than an average person in Japan. This is, of course, due to the policies around disposing of trash and the higher density of living in Japan vs. America.
Japan has to throw their garbage away in clear plastic bags, resulting in others knowing who is recycling and who is not. Also, they have thirty-four different categories for what their trash must be sorted in. Having these stricter rules on garbage would make people think twice about what they are throwing out instead of recycling.
Reduce! Reuse! America Recycles Day Is November 15th!
On this America Recycles Day, we need to celebrate by finding out what we can do to reduce global warming. We only have one habitable planet, which also means we have a limited amount of resources. This isn’t saying we are doomed now, to abandon all hope and give up. Recycling helps reduce the amount of need for those materials to be made brand new. This reduces the amount of energy in making paper, metal, and aluminum objects brand new.
We can also celebrate America Recycles Day by supporting companies that use this excess recycled material for something else. 4Ocean is a company that takes a pound of plastic that they pull from the ocean and make it into a bracelet. It is both fashionable and educational, proudly displaying the 4Ocean symbol on the side to become your next conversation starter. Hopefully, seeing these stories displaying the disastrous effects of global warming and not recycling will bring the audience members’ attention to the fact that we need to work harder to keep our earth safe.
While having media focus on the effects of global warming and recycling can be helpful, there is also the possibility that people will brush off the stories as strictly science fiction. Optimistically, these movies can reinvigorate people’s motivation to do as much as they can for the world. This can make people turn to documentaries and science-backed articles to learn more about what they can do while celebrating America Recycles Day.