Posted on June 19, 2025July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Handbook: example page

Tomatoes

Grown in Brazil
Eaten in Brazil

KEY FACTS

Type:
Short film (Portuguese with subtitles)
Duration:
13 minutes, 9 seconds
First shown:
15 June 1989
Director, Writer & Producer:
Jorge Furtado
Production company:
Casa de Cinema de Porto Allegre, Brazil

INGREDIENTS

INTENTIONS

Pop the bubble
Show capitalist evils
Teach economic geography

TACTICS

Make the familiar strange
Follow the thing
Join the dots
Lie to tell the truth
Embody exploitation
Make it incomplete
Make it funny

RESPONSES

Wow! WTF?
Capitalism is sh*t
They aren’t experts!
I gotta do something

IMPACTS

Now we’re talking
Now I know!

Image credit

Fresh Tomatoes, Loose – Tomato isolated (https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/tomato-isolated_7481096.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=26&uuid=9e0c895b-6975-47d6-a7cc-9e1dc7cb06d1) by timolina (Freepik)

Ilha das Flores

IN BRIEF

Filmmaker Jorge Furtado follows a tomato from Mr Suzuki’s field to a garbage dump on the ‘Island of Flowers’ in Porto Allegre, Brazil. Here, a rotten one binned in Mrs Anete’s kitchen is fed to pigs. What’s left is then scavenged by local people. This eccentric 13 minute ‘masterpiece’ was made for Martians visiting Planet Earth. It explains what a human being is, what the function of money in capitalism is, why pigs are valued more than some people. It’s a parable of poverty.

More about this page

We are slowly piecing together a ‘followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’ and are publishing the pages here as we write them. This is an ‘example’ page. The wide column paraphrases and condenses this example’s followthethings.com page, section by section. The narrow column contains some details about the commodity, some key facts about the activism that took place around it, and a list of its ‘ingredients’: its intentions, tactics, responses and impacts. These have been identified during the writing of this example page and, as more handbook pages are added, you will be able to click each one to read about it, and there will be links to other examples where we have found that ingredient, and a list of linked ingredients. This hypertext format, we believe, will help readers to understand how trade justice activism can work, and what it can do.

Original

Description

This is not a fictional film’. ‘There is a place called the Island of Flowers’. ‘There is no God’. Mr. Suzuki is Japanese. He grows tomatoes to sell for money. Mrs Anete sells perfume and uses her wages to buy things. Like tomatoes to make a sauce for her family’s pork dinner. One tomato is rotten. Diseased. She throws it in the trash. It ends up on the Ilha das Flores (the Island of Flowers) being fed – with others’ discarded veg – to pigs. What they won’t eat, poor and hungry locals queue to scavenge. The narrator explains that that the ‘organisms’ on this planet with ‘highly developed brains’ and ‘opposable thumbs are called humans. He explains the economic system they have created with the help of this tomato. Despite their intelligence and admirable ideals, that system is terrible. ‘Freedom’, he quotes Cecilia Meirelles, ‘is a word the human dream feeds on, that no one can explain or fail to understand’.

Inspiration / process / methodology

Jorge Furtado described his film as a ‘letter to a Martian who knows nothing of the earth and its social systems’. It’s a collage of juxtaposed elements. Monty Python-style animation. Hitchhiker’s Guide narration. Archive and stock footage. Religious and historical iconography. Advertising cliches. Parodied quiz show and educational film formats. Original film footage. And precise, repeated definitions of concepts like ‘Human’, ‘Tomato’, ‘Pig’, ‘Money,’ ‘Freedom.’ Human and nonhuman are equally interesting. Humans’ highly developed brains have allowed them to improve their planet (cut to a nuclear mushroom cloud). ‘Money was created in the seventh-century before Christ, Christ was a Jew, and Jews are human beings’ (cut to World War Two images of Jewish people as Nazi death camp trash). Humour is a trap. The tomato’s on a quest. Disparate dots are connected. Cognitive estrangement can dismantle neoliberal disourse, and bring social and environmental injustices into view. This film was cheap to make. It showed at festivals. Teachers brought VHS copies to class. It’s online now. Freely available.

Discussions / responses

It’s beautifully disheartening. Painfully hilarious. Head-battering. Stomach-punching. Entertaining and humorous. A brilliant depiction of capitalism, poverty, the human condition and consumption’s toxic connections. Marx could have written it. I stopped watching after ‘There is no God’. God exists. Amen! Why attack people’s faith? Seriously?!? Is your brain highly developed? Have you heard of satire? If God exists, he forgot about the people on Ilha das Flores. Brazilian bishops gave the film an award! ‘God is dead’ is a quote from Nietzsche’s ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’. It means it’s up to us to change the situation. The pig scene was staged. But this isn’t a documentary. You can stage things that are true. I saw it in school when I was 9. Our geography teacher rolled out the TV, turned down the lights, and didn’t say a word. Our conservative teacher wouldn’t show it. My mind exploded. For my generation, this was a collective trauma. A landmark in Brazilian cinema. How can a 1989 film say so much about society’s ignorance and lack of compassion today? I saw it in 2024 in my admin class. In psychology. Portuguese. Philosophy. Sociology. Nutrition in public health. Human beings are still free to go hungry. I still talk about humans’ opposable thumbs. Imagine a feature length version. Unbearable

Impacts / outcomes

It’s one of the most influential short films ever. IMDB’s best Brazilian short and documentary film ever. The Gramado Film Festival audience gave it an hysterical standing ovation. Documentary film would never be the same again. It still gets students talking.

FOLLOWTHETHINGS.COM PAGE

Pavalow, M. (2025) followthethings.com/ilha-das-flores

DEPARTMENT: Grocery

by Lucian Harford (June 2025)

Posted on September 30, 2024July 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump

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Recycle my waste

?? DUMPED & PROCESSED IN GHANA ??

DOCUMENTARY FILM

POP THE BUBBLE

CROSS CULTURES

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

HUMANISE WORKERS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

JOIN THE DOTS

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

?? TELL THE TRUTH ??

“A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump“
A documentary film presented by Reggie Yates, produced by Harriet Morter for BBC TV.
Available in full above (with ads). Available on the BBC’s iPlayer platform without ads (with login) here. Search online for streaming options here.

Agbogbloshie is a notorious e-waste dump on the outskirts of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. It’s where Western electronics ‘go to die’. It’s where migrant workers from the North of Ghana move to take up low paid and dangerous work recycling this waste. They recover valuable scrap metals like copper from discarded electrical devices, most famously by burning the plastic or rubber coatings from their wires. The smoke is acrid, poisonous. Processing this waste here has polluted the soil, the water table, the air, and the health of the people who work and live here. It’s a textbook case of the evils of Western consumption. In terms of toxic landscapes, some say, Agbogbloshie is in the same league as Chernobyl. In 2017, Reggie Yates (a British Radio and TV celebrity with Ghanaian heritage) spends a week here. It’s for an episode of a documentary TV series in which he tries to understand the lives lived by people less fortunate than himself by living with them for a week, doing the work that they do, sleeping where they sleep, eating what they eat, and being followed around by a film crew to capture every moment. In Agbogbloshie, he gets to know a group of ‘burner boys’ who are in their 20s called Razak, Awal, Yahro Muhammed and their chief. They show him what they do, burning the plastic off wires, dousing the bright orange flames in puddles of water in the mud, bagging up the bare copper, and selling it on for pennies. As Reggie gets to know these young men, he starts to care about them, becomes concerned about how they can support their families, and their children, on such low wages earned from work that will shorten their lives. They have serious health problems already. He wants viewers in the UK to feel culpable. Most don’t have a clue where their discarded electrical devices go to die. And the damage that this waste can do to people less fortunate than them in poorer countries. Like these ‘burner boys’ in Ghana. Lots of Western journalists and photographers have visited Agbogbloshie to tell this same story. Many seem to have met Razal, Awal, Yahro and Muhammed. They’ve acted as fixers, helping these visitors to tell the story they have heard about by providing testimony and burning plastic and rubber in photogenic ways. People who are in touch with the ‘burner boys’ say that they appreciated Reggie’s efforts to muck in, they thought he was cool. But waste academics in Ghana and overseas, as well as local commentators, have a problem with this story that Reggie and everyone else visits to tell. It’s one of those narratives of exploitation that has a questionable origin, quickly becomes iconic, and attracts visitors to tell ready-made versions of it over and over again. It’s a trope. Bad things happen in the Global South. Impoverished workers are suffering. Unthinking consumers in the global North are responsible for this. The media tells the story using authentic found characters with whom a celebrity presenter is able to spend time and to empathise. The audience is invited to empathise with the presenter empathising with the found characters. This encourages powerful emotional and practical responses, debates about the causes of the problem – like capitalism – potential solutions – like an industrial waste plant – and problems with the potential solutions – the ‘burner boys’ would suffer. But what if researchers and on-the-ground commenters reported that Agbogbloshie is quite a small dump, and that the e-waste processed there was mainly from Ghana? There’s next to nothing about the international waste supply chain in this film. What if the dump had been demolished in 2021, partly because of the toxic reputation that these repeated media exposés had given the place? And what if most of the online debate about this documentary had taken place two or three years after the dump had closed? Reggie’s documentary was published on YouTube in 2023 and 2024: giving it a worldwide audience that it had never originally had but also generating a huge fuss about a place that no longer existed. Everyone seem to agree that Reggie is cool, a genuinely empathetic person, but why didn’t the team behind his film seem to have done their homework? A very different story could – and maybe should – have been told.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Ghana: a Week In A Toxic Waste Dump. followthethings.com/ghana-a-week-in-a-toxic-waste-dump.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 77 minutes.

Posted on September 30, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Waste Land

followthethings.com
Recycle my waste

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Waste Land“
A documentary film starring Vik Muniz, soundtrack by Moby, directed by Lucy Walker for Almega Projects & 02 Films.
Trailer embeded abive. Search online for streaming options here.

“When we throw out rubbish, it is easy to assume that it somehow vanishes. In fact, of course, it largely goes to landfill sites such as Jardim Gramacho in Rio De Janeiro: the world’s biggest dump, a huge, undulating, foul-smelling, seagull-covered landscape of garbage which is home to about 3,000 people, who work all day picking out material that can be sold on to commercial recycling companies. Uneaten food found there is gratefully consumed. [Director] Walker follows [Brazilian-heritage, New York based artist Vik] Muniz as he works on a project creating portraits of the pickers, using the materials from this site, which will be sold at auction, with the profits going to the pickers themselves, or rather their representative campaigning group” (Source: Bradshaw 2011, np link).

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Waste Land (holding page). followthethings.com/waste-land.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 16, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story

followthethings.com
Recycle my waste

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story“
A documentary film written by Jenny Rustemeyer Grant Baldwin, directed by Grant Baldwin for Silvapark Films.
Trailer and on-demand Vimeo stream embedded above. Search the internet for other streaming options here.

Most trade justice activism looks back down the supply chain from the point of consumption. It looks at all the materials, human and other lives bound up in commodities. It asks how they could be brought together in more sustainable, more ethical, ways. The sheer volume of resources inside even the most basic thing can be astonishing. Just as astonishing are the mountains of unsold commodities that go to waste. All those resources and all that work that went into making commodities that aren’t consumed! It’s shocking. So, filmmakers Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin challenge themselves to live on thrown-away food for six months. They document how they get on with this experiment in a diary-like film. All the little details of their life, the decisions they make, are shared with the audience. People throw perfectly good food away at home, so maybe rummage through their bins. Then they discover the hidden world of supermarket dumpsters that contain discarded out-of-date food. They find and join local networks of dumpster-divers who specialise is finding, emptying, distributing and eating what’s in them. But what kind of diet do you end up living on when this is how you shop? How many lasagnes can you squeeze into your freezer? Do you fancy eating lasagne every day? Would you try this zero cost ethical food shopping? What can audiences learn about the food industry’s inevitable production of waste? They call on some experts to explain.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (holding page). followthethings.com/just-eat-it-a-food-waste-story.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024June 23, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ilha Das Flores

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Grocery | Money & Finance | Recycle my waste

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Ilha Das Flores (Island Of Flowers)“
A short film written, directed and produced by Jorge Furtado for Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Embedded in full above. Search online to watch the film here. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

It sounds simple: filmmaker Jorge Furtado follows the life of a tomato from Mr Suzuki’s tomato field to a garbage dump ‘on the Island of Flowers’ in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here, the rotten tomatoes binned in shoppers’ kitchens are selected to feed the local pigs. The leftovers are scavenged by local people who have queued for the chance. But, this no ordinary film. Its footage doesn’t always seem ‘real’. Its voiceover is eccentric but is delivered in monotone. It’s like an economic geography lecture – or a public information film – that’s been made for an audience visiting Planet Earth for the first time. It explains what a human being is, and what the function of money in capitalism is, for instance. It’s full of human beings whose tomato-connected lives audiences can learn a little bit about. It’s a collage made from quick cuts between filmed scenes, found media and ideas. There seem to be so many tangents. But, together, they gradually build a powerful argument that, ultimately, trashes the way that capitalism values people, animals and the environment. Humans who watched it called it a beautiful, hilarious and deeply troubling masterpiece. You’ll have to watch it to believe it. Maybe two or three times. It’s only 13 minutes long. It’s the only example of trade justice activism that we have found that follows a thing from the beginning to the end of its life. And it decentres the stereotypical shopper in fascinating and eccentric ways. But what is Jorge Furtado trying to achieve? What are his cultural reference points? Why is this highly political film presented as a kind of weird joke?

Page reference: Maura Pavalow (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilha-das-flores.html (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 68 minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic China

followthethings.com
Recycle my waste

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Plastic China“
A documentary directed by Jiuliang Wang for CNEX, Beijing TYC & Oriental Companion Media
YouTube trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.

Recycling plastic is a good thing right? But where does it go to be recycled? Who does recycling work? And what’s that work like? This film traces the world’s plastic waste to a small village in China where families sort, clean and shred it by hand and by machine. Some of it is processed to make nurdles – the tiny plastic beads that factories buy in bulk to melt and make recycled plastic goods. A lot of it isn’t – partly because there are so many types of plastic, and those nurdles can’t mix them together. The film shows the labour of plastic recycling from the perspective of an 11 year old girl called Yi-Jie. Her family eke a living processing plastic waste shipped into their lives from all over the world. She recycles full time to help earn money for, and alongside, members of her impoverished family. Some of the plastic packaging she processes includes images of wealthy consumers enjoying the goodies that they used to contain. These images feed Yi-Jin’s dreams of a better life. She plays imaginative games with the plastic packaging that surrounds her. In one scene she makes and plays with a plastic waste computer. But her family doesn’t earn enough for her to attend school. She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Audiences for trade justice activism are used to worrying about who makes their stuff down the supply chain. But the hidden lives and labours in commodities don’t disappear when they’re purchased. Others become attached to them when they’re thrown away. The same labour (and environmental) rights issues are there to worry about too. The materials that commodities are made from never disappear. They just appear somewhere else, in other people’s work, lives and landscapes. This film was terrible PR for the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, they banned it from being shown there. But they went much further, banning the importing and recycling of plastic waste from overseas. Shutting down an industry is perhaps the most powerful impact that trade justice activism can have. But is this what the filmmakers had in mind when they decided to make Plastic China? Could they have predicted that this might happen? What’s their responsibility towards Yi-Jon and her family?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Plastic China (holding page). followthethings.com/plastic-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on August 17, 2024July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic Bag

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My shopping bag | Recycle my waste

“Plastic Bag“
A short film directed by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by Werner Herzog for ITVS’s Futurescapes series.
Published on YouTube, embedded above. Search online for other streams here.

Remember those thin plastic bags that used to be available, free, at the checkout? This is the starting point for Ramin Bahrani’s short film. What lives do these bags lead after the shopping is emptied from them at home? How long do they live? Where do they end their lives? Do their lives ever end? And what if one of them could tell that story for itself (in a droll Bavarian accent)? What would it say? One may think it’s exciting to have finally been chosen, there at the checkout, to fulfil his destiny. To help a shopper carry their shopping home. The shopper-bag relationship is short-lived, but beautiful. But what if that shopper later uses you to pick up her dog’s poo? And put you in a bin? How would you feel about her then, as your life continued, further and further away from hers? You’re not the slightest bit biodegradable. Your life is going to last for ever, starting in a landfill dump. What’s it like to be there with millions of bits of other trash? Imagine being caught in the wind, blown through the countryside, travelling hundreds of miles, over maybe thousands of years, ending up in the sea, with the fish, possibly causing them all kinds of problems. Who and what might you have seen and met on your journey? What would you ponder about your life now its purpose is so far in the past? This film has a silly and unbelievable plot, but its also wonderfully moving, hilarious, thought-provoking. Viewers are surprised to find themselves empathising with an object. Caring about its fate. How its life could have been different. Maybe this is the best way to change people’s minds about the mountains of waste created by capitalism and its commodity culture. Maybe it’s the perfect film to illustrate vital materialism, assemblage theory, affect and/or dark ecology. Even if Bahrani didn’t set out to do so. Maybe you have to watch it to write an essay. Maybe it’s just too long or just plain stuuuuupid. Like a childish spinoff from a well-known movie franchise like Toy Story. Ugh. Watch and read for yourself! This page is a wild ‘follow the thing’ ride into debates about environmental justice and reponsibility.

Page reference: Molly Healy, Josephine Thompson, Daisy Aylott, Lily Andrews, Kate Ward, Charlotte Rooker, James Swain, Edward Denton & Ethan Langfield (2025) Plastic Bag. followthethings.com/plastic-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 76 minutes.