Waste=Food: A Conversation with Rob van Hattum — May 24th 2007

By Alexia Prichard

Documentary filmmaker Rob van Hattum's latest effort, Waste = Food, explores the concept of "cradle-to-cradle" environmentalism. First developed by celebrated environmental architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, this pioneering design philosophy envisions endless use and reuse of raw materials. Since Van Hattum's film recently premiered on Sundance Channel's The Green, this seemed like the perfect moment to have a chat with him.

Netscape: When did you first become interested in environmentalism?

Van Hattum: Quite a long time ago, actually. In 1972, when I was 17, there was a report released by a nongovernmental think tank called the Club of Rome. They argued that we would soon have a very polluted environment, and problems with energy and natural resources. We discussed the report at school and it got me rather worried. It was the first moment my mind was turned towards the environment and the impact man has on the planet.

The year after that, there was an oil embargo by the OPEC countries. As a result, we experienced government-mandated car-free Sundays in the Netherlands. I talked about the environment a lot, about our impact on the planet, and you could say I was kind of a nerd in the eyes of my friends. They always tried to convince me that science and technology were the cause of all the environmental evil. I tried to convince them that mankind itself was the problem, at least those who believe that you can use the oceans and the air as a sewage system for harmful products.

Netscape: How did you become a filmmaker?

Van Hattum: I was always interested in science and technology and I always tried working out ideas about sustainable energy and cleaner production technologies and recycling. It turns out that the best way to spread the message is the media, so I became a radio and television science producer.

Netscape: Tell me about some of your earlier work.

Van Hattum: My first radio production was in the early Eighties. It was a 2-hour documentary about the possibilities of hydrogen as a storage medium for sustainable energy. I tried to explain that a clean energy system was possible using solar, wind, and geothermal power. The radio documentary generated a lot of attention at that time. But... oil became cheaper. OPEC produced more and more oil and the consumer society became a fact. I got a car...a wife, a house, a family. I made programs about science and technology but always with the environment in my mind. In other words, I lived my life. Like we all did.

In 2003, some 22 years later, the debate about global warming was spreading and there was a rumor about peak oil. (To quote Colin Campbell: "The term peak oil refers to the maximum rate of the production of oil in any area under consideration, recognising that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion.") This was just before oil prices started to rise. I wondered what had happened with the hydrogen concept during the past 22 years, so I again made a documentary about it, called The Hydrogen Revolution. The same story about the potentials of a hydrogen economy, but now with new ideas and technologies together with visionary ideas from Jeremy Rifkin.

The impact was huge and the film was sold to many counties. That inspired me to make another film, one that would be about the depletion of resources and how science and technology could be used to build a clean world. The only problem was that I did not have a good story line.

Netscape: Which is where McDonough and Braungart came into the picture. How did that happen?

Van Hattum: A colleague of mine was showing me a small article in the New York Times. It was about two guys developing new production technologies and cleaner design strategies. I started searching on the Web for information about these two--Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart--and realized that this was the story I was looking for! Cradle-to-cradle design completely synchronized with my own ideas about the potentials of science and technology to bring about economic benefit through caring for the environment.

Netscape: What were your interviews like?

Van Hattum: Very inspiring. Sometimes you meet those people with whom you are able to exchange ideas with such dazzling speed that you have almost no time to take a breath. McDonough was like that. So was Michael Braungart, who has an immense knowledge about chemical compounds and their impact on the environment and almost every minute a new idea.

Netscape: "Greening" seems to be paying off for the big companies you discuss in your film, specifically Ford and Herman Miller. If that's the case, why aren't all companies doing it?

Van Hattum: Most companies still see environmentalism as "icing on the cake," as Bill McDonough calls it. They consider it a corporate image issue only, and think about it in terms of limiting the amount of toxic chemicals they put into the environment. This what they mean by "eco-efficiency." But polluting more efficiently is still affecting the environment--only the time scale differs. And this model still costs the companies money. They pay their licenses to pollute, and meanwhile they have to build expensive cleaning devices, which do only half the job. In other words, they see environmental product models as costs only, not economic solutions, because they don't want to start from scratch.

Netscape: Even if it's proved that it will save the company money?

Van Hattum: Yes, because what you're asking them to buy into is long-term investment. And that's really quite a hard sell to a large company. That's why McDonough and Braungart have to show the process step-by-step, how you can really earn money if you are willing to look at the entire lifecycle of a product--from the raw materials to the moment the finished product fulfills its task and is being thrown away. That's cradle-to-cradle. It will give huge benefits, but not the immediate benefits shareholders are asking for.

Netscape: How do McDonough and Braungart get past these rigid mindsets?

Van Hattum: They ask tough questions. What is your product doing for the world, the animals, the children? How can nature and humans benefit from it? How can you design eco-intelligent? How can you incorporate your product into the biosphere or the technosphere?

The interesting thing is that most managers at these big companies love their children and wish them a healthy future, but as soon as they're in business mode, they seem to be on another planet, where their children don't have to breathe the air, play with the soil, or drink the water. I sometimes compare it with the ideas we had about hygiene at the end of the 19th century. We started to understand the role of bacteria and fungi, and we knew that it was healthier not to throw our feces in the streets, but instead to build proper toilets and sewage systems and water treatment plants. Yet we didn't build them for some time. It was all too costly.

The refrigerator is another good example. It was a huge innovation in our struggle for hygiene. It costs money, but it saves our lives.

Netscape: We adapted.

Van Hattum: Yes, and this is something will finally happen (I hope) with our ideas about the ecology of our planet. Eco-intelligent design is not a cost--it's an innovation that will generate new products and money and will lead to a truly healthier place for our children and for us.

I made Waste = Food because there are many negative stories about our environment. Global warming, energy crisis, depletion, water shortage... it goes on and on. I am still an optimist, like when I was young. I still believe science and technology can help us to solve problems by assisting us in the creation of new eco-intelligent products. That's what I tried to show in my documentary, because I think that's what we need if we want to live "with" our planet instead of "on" our planet.

Tags: environment, green, Sundance, Sundance Channel

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