‘Seeding Change’ Will Activate You and Your Wallet (Movie Review)
By Mike Szymanski
Seeding Change: The Power of Conscious Commerce
Rating: 8/10
Trailer: http://www.seedingchangefilm.com
Director & Writer: Richard Yelland
Movie Rating: N/A
Style: Documentary
Length: 51 mins.
Website: SeedingChangeFilm.com
Nowhere has the message of “voting with your wallet” been more clearly defined than in this powerful documentary, “Seeding Change: The Power of Conscious Commerce” written by documentarian Richard Yelland. With interviews from different corners of the world, Yelland draws the line to the high stakes of the planet’s environmental crises and shows how a group of companies are finding solutions about it through a new economic model.
Ultimately, their customers are making positive changes by voting with their wallet (or pocketbook, or what have you.)
“Climate change is not a science problem, it’s a human condition,” says environmentalist Paul Hawke, who explains how capitalism and climate change are intertwined. He explains that the world has to be concerned about the climate crisis like they are concerned about their children, food and habitat.
This documentary is new and different because it spotlights ‘’triple bottom line’’ businesses that measure their successes not only by how much they make, but also how their products affect the world socially and environmentally. The companies not only offer solutions to some of today’s most pressing social and environmental issues, but they empower the general public to get involved by supporting their brands and voting with their money.
With simple direct interviews of scientific talking heads and just regular folk, like Fabio, a driver and fruit seller in Brazil, documentarian Yelland shows how universal the issues and problems are in the world.
All forests are connected in one canopy around the globe and it works together, that’s why birds that fly up from South America impacts the wildlife here in the U.S., his experts explain.
Yelland is a noted documentarian, who won numerous awards and is endorsed by Oscar-nominated docs-activists like Morgan Spurlock (who did that documentary “Super Size Me” that has forever changed my fast-food habits).
Step by step, we follow the filmmaker and camera through how acai berries made it to the international markets from the rubber tree plant to health food stores in the U.S.
“We show how we can make money doing good,” says Gunnar Lovelace of THRIVE, which provides organic groceries at wholesale prices. “When products don’t sell, people stop making them.”
This results in things like bringing matte back to the country where it came from, and helping farmers understand bio-diversity.
The most important message is that this will give you “thought and attention to where you spend your money,” as one of the sage business folk explains. “It is more important than voting, you are voting with your dollar.”
To show exactly what they mean, the filmmaker notes that the film generated 10 tons of carbon dioxide to make the movie, and they off-set that by planting mangrove trees through seatrees.com.
To host screenings, get the community involved, find companies, there’s the website SeedingChangeFilm.com for a start.
###
