Cleverly titled ‘Wasteminster’, Greenpeace’s two minute stop-motion film shocks viewers with UK plastic waste statistics and highlights the government’s lack of effort in tackling the issue. The film was created by Studio Birthplace and CGI experts Method & Madness.  

The film opens with a Boris Johnson caricature talking about being a “global leader in tackling plastic pollution”, before a barrage of plastic starts to pour down from above. Eventually the plastic barrage turns into a sea which carries Johnson through a model Westminster as he continues his bumbling speech of empty promises. The speech is made up of quotes from actual speeches made by Boris in recent years and months. 

“We didn’t want to put words into Boris’s mouth so we went through hours of interviews and speeches by Boris and the government where plastic pollution and the environment were discussed and quotes were extracted,” say directors Jorik Dozy and Sil van der Woerd from Studio Birthplace. 

The end cuts to real footage of plastic waste that has been dumped overseas and highlights the unbelievable  effects that UK plastic waste exports are having worldwide.

Greenpeace is calling for a complete ban on all plastic waste exports by 2025, and for the government to also set legally-binding targets to reduce single-use plastics by 50% by 2025. 

According to Sam Chetan-Welsh, the political campaigner at Greenpeace “the plastic we carefully wash and sort for recycling is being shipped off to other countries where it overwhelms their waste systems and much of it ends up illegally dumped or burnt, poisoning local people and polluting oceans and rivers.” 

Through this intelligent video we learn more about the UK’s effect on plastic waste – that’s its explicit message. But what other, more implicit messages can we learn and who will pick up on these? What does the video suggest about the efficiency of the Conservative party, of the Prime Minister? Could it be saying something about the public, even, and its refusal to adapt or change habits?
Needless to say, Greenpace packs a punch in two minutes.