Last week I was invited to do an article for Pixar Planet. I went to experience Wall-E and the live character show at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Obviously, I had a great time, I love the theatre, the film and ice cream. You can find my complete article here.
There was a few things I noticed in context
that I personally found amusing:
The El Capitan, like most theaters has moviegoers overload concessions, a large popcorn and a drink were in just about everyones hand. Considering one of the messages in the film, I chose to pass
on the “lunch in a cup”.
What really irked me was what followed. I grabbed my plastic water bottle and went to leave the theater. A worker came down
with a trash bag and glanced at me expectantly.
“I was going to put this in the recycling,” I said,
politely wondering where to place my number 2 plastic.
“Oh we don’t recycle, ” he responded, with a half-smile
like he knew what I was thinking.
This is the theatre that CORPORATE DISNEY owns.
Did they WATCH the film at all ??
Do they realize that THEY, among others,
are a reflection of Buy N Large?

The theatre has a capacity of 1000 seats and five screenings a day. If 75% of moviegoers have a plastic bottle and a plastic popcorn bucket, that is 30,000+ some plastic bottles per week going to a landfill,
coming from the El Capitan Theatre alone.
This weekend 250,000,000 dollars were spent at the movies. Divide by the national average of $6.00 a ticket. That is 42,000,000 some odd people that went to the movies. How many of them had plastic bottles?? How many of those people went and recycled their bottles? Did you?

I’ve been recycling since I can remember, we had recycling education program in my elementary school in the 80’s. This isn’t news. Our school campus where I teach animation finally started a recycling program, as it is the corporate trendy thing to do these days. Better late than never. I guess it’s ok that it’s ‘hip’ as long as it stays and encourages others to do the right thing. It’s definitely time for movie theaters to remove the blinders and realize the amount of trash that they are creating. Watch your own film.