Below is a sample of the many videos on various sustainability topics available in our Films on Demand steaming video collection. Hover over the information button for more details on these titles. Videos are available to members of the Transy community only; if you're accessing this page from off campus, you'll be prompted to enter your Transy ID and password.
- Low Carbon: The Economics of Climate Change Some conservatives paint the environmentalist movement as socialist or worse, but the key to reducing humanity’s carbon footprint may actually appear in new manifestations of capitalism. From electric car technology to the production of ethanol out of waste products, fighting climate change is in fact creating new economic opportunities and could actually steer the planet away from a plunge in Gross World Product. One of the countries leading the charge is Spain. As it promotes solar and wind energy and the widespread use of bicycles, the second-largest country in Western Europe is embracing the challenges of green commerce. What can be learned from the Spanish example? This program investigates.
- Renewal Energy: Ethical Markets 1 This program examines the urgent need—not only in the U.S. but across the world—for sustainable energy; it also illustrates how new power production methods are becoming a reality. Alternative energy trendsetters are featured, including Time magazine “Hero for the Planet” Geoffrey Ballard, who explains his hydrogen fuel cell innovations. Evergreen Solar vice president Mark Farber describes his company’s advanced solar cell production methods and its mission to provide access to energy in the developing world—a goal shared by the Solar Electric Light Fund, says executive director Bob Freling. In addition, Rocky Mountain Institute founder Amory Lovins promotes the benefits of small solar power plants, and economist Hazel Henderson explores the potential of wind energy.
- Uprising Burning coal remains a major source of energy, emitting toxic pollutants and carbon dioxide. North of Chicago, in Waukegan, Illinois, America Ferrera meets with activists, backed by the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, who are working to shut down a local coal plant, and with a mayor who wants to keep it open. Residents complain that the pollution is making them sick. Ferrera learns about an option that can provide clean energy, green jobs and scenic development of the lakefront. Pollution from energy plants is choking the air in many Chinese cities, and the middle class there has joined with activists to pressure the government to clean up the environment. Sigourney Weaver investigates China's impact on today's global environment, and the progress it is making to reduce emissions even as its economy grows. China is investing more money in clean energy than any other country in the world. A National Geographic Production
Composting, Gardening, etc.
- After Life: The Strange Science of Decay Imagine an average family kitchen. The fridge and cupboards are well stocked. There are flowers on the table. There's even a dead mouse on the counter and flies gathering above the fruit bowl. Over a period of three months, this film reveals the incredible science of taphonomy, following what happens to the organic matter in this kitchen as it starts to decompose. Beautifully shot, After Life is a journey through the heart of decay—from the towering branches of Aspergillus mold that sprouts from the surface of an orange to the spread of slime mold across a loaf of bread. A BBC Production. (50 minutes) A BBC Production.
- Deep Down and Dirty: The Science of Soil It takes a thousand years to form a single inch of soil. It is a fragile layer on the surface of the land—yet essential to all life on Earth. But where did soil come from and how was it made? Gardening expert Chris Beardshaw reveals the secrets locked within soil. Traveling around in his specially-equipped mobile soil lab, he delves down into dirt to uncover its deepest secrets. He looks into the distant past to reveal the almost miraculous way soil first formed, and takes a tantalizing glimpse into the future, to reveal soil as a commodity more precious than oil or gold. A BBC Production.
- One Man One Cow One Planet A focused exposure of India's agricultural plight and the answers provided by biodynamic farming.
- Perfect Compost: A Master Class With Peter Proctor Peter Proctor is New Zealand's father of biodynamic agriculture. Compost is the fundamental element in all gardening and farming. This master class takes you through the compost making process from gathering and assembling your materials to creating the perfect compost heap.
- Permaculture Penny Livingston, of the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, California, leads viewers through the history of permaculture and its principles. She discusses permaculture as an agricultural practice that increases biodiversity and helps us to understand our place in the ecosystem. She also touches on other food system trends, including seasonal eating and community supported agriculture.
- Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: Farming with Nature Austrian “Agro-Rebel” Sepp Holzer built one of the biggest functioning permaculture farms in Europe by observing and working with natural systems. This film highlights Kramaterhof as a case study in economically viable permaculture, focusing on species diversity, micro-climates, and other innovative cultivation methods.
- Sustainable Landscaping: Growing a Greener Home Over the course of this video, viewers will learn how a green approach to landscaping can reduce the amount of energy needed to heat and cool a house. The role of landscaping as a system, the connection between the outdoor habitat and the home as a living space, the proper management of rainwater and runoff, the value of native plants, and the benefits of green roofs are also explored. Visits to residential project sites with the landscape architects and designers who created them are included as well, offering insights into the principles and design philosophies that have shaped their work. Correlates to all National CTE Organizational Standards (including the provisions of the Perkins Act). Viewable/printable discussion questions are available online. A Shopware Production. A part of the series Green-ovating: Home Renovations for a Sustainable World.
- TEDTalks: Ron Finley—A guerilla gardener in South Central LA Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."
- Urban Agriculture This program looks into the urban farming phenomenon in Montreal, where community gardens have been a staple for decades; in Toronto, where people have taken their crops to the skies for lack of space; and in Detroit, a city that is reclaiming space left vacant after abandoned buildings are demolished. It is in “bombed-out” locales like Detroit that urban farming really demonstrates what it can do for a city—it gives dead spaces a new lease on life, feeds hungry mouths, and creates wealth. In French with English subtitles.
Green Energy
- Breaking the Wall of Coal: How Climate Science Calls for Radical Changes in Energy Policy On the long and winding road to more sustainable energy and climate policies, the year 2015 saw several unexpected and positive developments – the largest fossil fuel divestment campaign in history reached its peak and led to trillions of dollars being pulled out of coal, gas and oil companies. In early summer, Pope Francis released his long-anticipated encyclical Laudato Si’, calling the world to drastic and immediate action in order to avert uncontrolled global warming and environmental pollution. But just before the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, a decisive date for global climate policy and the future of the planet, climate economists are concerned about the adverse effects of low coal prices and little political will to come to meaningful results that could support global action against climate change...
- Electricity Generation: Renewables The drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that many governments are trying to decarbonise electricity generation. But some renewables only generate electricity when conditions are right; they are also location-dependent and often face opposition from local residents. From wind, to solar, biomass, HEP, tidal and geothermal power—as well as explaining how different renewables are used to generate electricity, this video examines the pros and cons of each energy source.
- The Greening of Energy Although renewable energies are seen as clean and green, their development can often be cause of conflict as local residents are opposed to their impact on the visual landscape. Some technologies are also limited by weather and climate. This program uses examples from the U.K., India, and Europe to examine the pros and cons of a variety of renewable energy sources. It includes a discussion of energy de-carbonization and explores the importance of reducing energy consumption and improving efficiency. Wind, solar, tidal, hydro-electric, biomass, and biogas technologies are considered, as well as energy security and the transition from fossil fuels.
- Green Power, Clean Choices Powering houses and heating water in more energy-efficient, sustainable ways is an important component of many remodeling projects. Whether it’s through the use of passive or active solar technologies, wind, or other renewable power sources, today’s remodelers need to understand the basics of green power so they can guide their clients toward smarter choices and then integrate these technologies into a home in the most intelligent way. Green Power, Clean Choices provides a fundamental understanding of how these technologies work and takes viewers to residential installation sites to see these systems in real-world applications.
- Keep Calm and Drill On Oil-rich Norway has adopted the radical goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. But as ABC Australia correspondent Eric Campbell reports, there’s a catch to this green revolution.
- Power Surge Can emerging technology defeat global warming? The United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in clean energy projects as our leaders try to save our crumbling economy and our poisoned planet in a single bold, green stroke. Are we finally on the brink of a green-energy power surge, or is it all a case of too little, too late? From solar panel factories in China, to a carbon capture and storage facility in the Sahara desert, to massive wind and solar installations in the United States, NOVA travels the globe to reveal the surprising technologies that just might turn back the clock on climate change. Focusing on the latest and greatest innovations, including everything from artificial trees to green reboots of familiar technologies like coal and nuclear energy, NOVA asks: "Can our technology, which helped create this problem, now solve it?"
- TEDTalks: Debate—Does the World Need Nuclear Energy? Nuclear power: the energy crisis has even die-hard environmentalists reconsidering it. In this first-ever TED debate, Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson square off over the pros and cons. A discussion that’ll make you think—and might even change your mind.
Green Building
- Green Home Building Eco-friendly building is catching on in the construction trade, and is projected to become the norm among home builders and contractors. Using easy-to-understand visuals and comments from industry experts, this program presents general construction guidelines for environmentally friendly residential building. Viewers are given a solid foundation of technical knowledge and best practices in all aspects of green housing construction. Topics include lot design, passive solar energy, resource efficiency, recycling methods, water conservation, the Energy Star program, HVAC, energy footprints, indoor air quality, financial incentives, and professional certifications.
- Passive Passion: Buildings Doing More with Less In 1990 European physicists set out to test the limits of cost-effective energy efficiency. The result was the first passive house, a four-unit townhouse that combined heavy insulation, airtightness, and heat-recovery ventilation to achieve reductions of up to 90 percent in the energy required for heating and cooling. This program introduces the passive house concept—popular in Europe, but slower to catch on in the States—and showcases some beautiful examples in Austria and Germany. Viewers meet co-originator Wolfgang Feist, who explains the mechanics behind the design; Henry Gifford, who hopes to popularize it in the U.S.; and Dieter Roskoni, who still lives in the first-ever passive house.
- The Sky's the Limit Building “green” has now become an economic necessity, especially in Asia’s burgeoning megalopolises. From vertical farming in New York City, to a sustainable Panama City office building, to the “Garden City” of Singapore, environmental skyscrapers are helping revive city centers, spare the climate, and check urban sprawl.
- Solar Decathlon This film follows Vienna University of Technology engineering and design students to California to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy’s international competition to construct the best energy-autonomous, sustainably built house. Nineteen of 150 university teams are selected to construct a model outside Los Angeles, where they are judged on disciplines including comfort zone, appliance function, hot water production, energy efficiency, home entertainment, housing technology and innovation, architectural design, marketability, production costs, and communication.
- STARS and Pop Cans: Sustainability at Nova Scotia Community College This short documentary focuses on Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC), which provides trades training and vocational education on 13 campuses and in six community learning centers. The flagship campus was designed to be a model of sustainability that would lead the whole province. The building was constructed to LEED Gold standards. The building has three living walls (two inside and one outside) plus 8,000 square feet of green roof growing a range of local plants. It has photovoltaic panels, geothermal and passive solar heating and cooling, and five types of wind turbines. It recently received Gold certification by STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) ranking well ahead of senior institutions like Dalhousie, McGill, and Concordia.
- Thinking Green, Building Smart The fundamental difference between a green approach to building and remodeling and a conventional approach is the thinking that guides the project. This video explores the thought process at the core of green architectural design and construction as it takes viewers behind the scenes of an architectural firm specializing in sustainable design, a remodeler who has built a green construction business, a supplier of eco-friendly building materials, and a homeowner who has remodeled his house from the ground up using green materials, technologies, and practices.
- Tiny After a decade of travel, Christopher Smith approaches his 30th birthday and decides it’s time to plant some roots. He impulsively buys a 5-acre plot of land in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong dream of building a home in the mountains of Colorado. With the support of his girlfriend, Merete, he sets out to build a Tiny House from scratch despite having no construction experience. TINY takes us inside six homes stripped to their essentials, exploring the owners’ stories and the design innovations that make them work. TINY invites its viewers to dream big and imagine living small.
Recycling
- E-Waste Tragedy Illegal electronics recycling is a toxic business on a global scale. Why do three quarters of Europe's electronic waste disappear from the official recycling system? In the suburbs of Accra, Ghana, children play at dismantling scrapped electronic equipment, surrounded by toxic fumes in a sadly-famous, uncontrolled rubbish dump. The film takes this site as its point of departure, and is driven forward by Ghanaian journalist Mike Anane, who is an expert on the environment. He wants to know why his country has become the trash can of the developed countries. This lucid and efficient investigation by Cosima Dannoritzer (The Light Bulb Conspiracy) into several European countries, Asia and the U.S., reveals the apparatus of large-scale trafficking, as well as a complex chain of responsibility and collusion.
- Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia This hard-hitting documentary produced by Basel Action Network on the dumping of toxic computer waste in China continues to open peoples’ eyes to the true horror of the high-tech revolution.
- Light Bulb Recycling Did you know that light bulbs can be recycled and made into new products? Join the host of Curiosity Quest Goes Green, Joel Greene as he explores the Lighting Resources facility in Texas to learn how old light bulbs are collected and recycled.
- Plastic Bottle Cap Recycling Did you know that plastic bottles caps are separated out and made into new products? Join Joel Greene as he rides a new environmental wave of recycling water bottle caps and tours several facilities to find out how post consumer products are made.
- The Recyclergy: 33 Minutes Of Garbage Pioneers of the San Francisco Bay Area's recycling movement share their insightfully hilarious thoughts and stories on garbage collection, treasure hunting, Jack Benny, and the products we buy.
- Sustainable and Recycled Textiles Cut-price garments not meant to last for more than a year or two make up nearly half the clothing market, resulting in a rising tide of textile waste. This program profiles clothing designers who are turning consumer demand for green products into fashion trends. The Junky Styling team searches thrift shops for vintage fabric which it then uses to create outfits for their high-profile clientele, while Worn Again founder Mike Corbett shows viewers how he makes and markets shoes from materials like old seat belts. The video also goes to a factory where textile technologists process old jute sacks for reuse as sustainable fabrics. Part of the series Get Into Textiles.
- Urban Mining While the rubbish mountain is growing, raw materials are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive all over the world. For decades, natural resources have been shipped to industrialized countries and used in tower blocks, mobile phones, cars and other things. Thus, cities contain enormous amounts of raw materials. Researchers and companies are now starting to prospect urban mines for precious metals and minerals. So far, they are stuck in the walls of condemned buildings, long forgotten landfills, and disused everyday electronic devices. Those huge and growing urban mines must be explored and put to use systematically in order to ensure reliable long-term access to raw materials in resource-poor countries.
- Water Recycling Drought, increasing populations, and shifting rainfall patterns are placing ever-greater demands on water supplies. But this video clip focuses on all that precious liquid we flush away. Can our wastewater be safely recycled for human consumption? In southeast Queensland a controversial multibillion dollar scheme is recycling water from treated sewage. Supporters of the initiative believe it will provide a much-needed boost to urban water supplies, but critics claim the technology can’t guarantee the water is clear of dangerous contaminants.