Controversy UK
Food production has increasingly become a huge business for a handful of giant corporations. SOYALISM follows the industrial production chain of pork and the related soybean monoculture, from China to Brazil through the United States and Mozambique. This eye-opening documentary describes the enormous concentration of power in the hands of these Western and Chinese companies and the impact this is having on the food we consume.
Blame Game investigates the murky world of global electronic waste disposal, where legal grey areas, a lack of investment in recycling, unscrupulous businesses and politicised application of the existing laws lead to wasted opportunities, environmental degradation and for the people of Agbogbloshie – hellish living conditions in a toxic dumping ground.
The march towards the dominance of GM products in agriculture started 15 years ago but where will it end? Today in Argentina all agriculture is transgenic but after 15 years the weeds have adapted and the Glyphosate no longer works. In response farmers have started using hazardous chemicals in an indiscriminate and unregulated manner. In some areas the rate of serious genetic deformities in children has exploded. We meet the families and doctors convinced that living so close farms is the cause.
‘Dieselgate’ made headlines around the world. For deliberately cheating the system, Volkswagen were made to pay a record $20 billion fine. But, as this investigation shows, they were far from the only culprits. We met the researchers who uncovered the cheat devise and investigate the dangers posed by NOx emissions.
The environmental problems caused by fracking in America have been well publicised but what’s less known are the gas industry’s plans for expansion in other countries. This investigation, filmed in Botswana, South Africa, Alaska and North America, reveals how fracking plants are quietly invading some of the most protected places on the planet - including Africa’s national parks.
The Citarum river in Indonesia, is the world's most polluted river. A reporter teamed up with international scientists to investigate the causes and consequences of this pollution. One of the main polluters is actually the fashion industry : 500 textile factories throw away their wastewater directly into the Citarum river.
More than 4000 satellites orbit the Earth, and the services they provide are part of our everyday life. But space debris is a major threat to satellites, and already managed to bring the Hubble space telescope to a standstill. How can space debris be disposed of? We take a look at the possibilities and the latest findings in research.
The world’s most consumed fruit has an untold story. The industrialization of the humble tomato preceded the globalized economy that was to follow. It is now as much of a commodity as wheat, rice, or petrol. The tomato’s ability to create strongly identifiable products, such as ketchup, pizza sauce, soups, sauces, drinks or frozen dishes is unbeatable. As early as 1897, ten years before Ford started to mass produce cars, Heinz was already converting tomatoes into standardized cans of puree.
The world’s food supply becomes more and more imbalanced. One billion people are starving, every second a child dies of hunger or its consequences. At the same time food production is at its peak, the demand for meat is growing not only in the industrial world. Up to 30% of the world’s harvest is ruined by diseases or pests and less than half ends up on our plate. This film reveals the causes and impacts and tries to find solutions how we can feed up to nine billion people in the next 35 years.
More than 70 years after the end of World War II an oppressive legacy from the past overshadows the future: ships sunken in the war rusting on the seabed. They pose a threat that is still completely ignored. Lying on the seabed are 6,300 wrecks which together contain an estimated 1.5 to 12 billion litres of oil.The question is: how long will the oil stay inside? It’s a journey that takes us back into history, on perilous salvaging missions, to the ocean bed, and into laboratories.
With Donald Trump, an outmoded view of climate change has taken hold of the White House again. Great news for oil companies such as Exxon and Shell. They have been secretly financing scientific studies and campaigns, which are talking down climate change and have been influencing the public debate for 60 years. New documents prove that since 1957, these companies have known that burning fossil fuels changes the climate - their own, strictly secret research had revealed this.
