As part of its month-long celebration of Earth Day, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva will present the film “Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home” at 7 p.m. Friday, April 17, at Second and James streets, a block east of the downtown courthouse.
 
Guest speaker for the evening is Gary Mielke, recycling coordinator for Kane County. Mielke is a dynamic proponent of recycling, and shares the latest information about what can and cannot be recycled and why. He expertly fields questions from audiences of all ages.
 
The documentary exposes the family household as one of the most ferocious environmental predators. Writer-director Andrew Nisker asks an average family, the McDonalds, to keep every scrap of garbage they create for three months, then takes them on a journey to find out where it all goes and what it’s doing to the world. By the end of the odyssey, audience members are inspired to revolutionize their lifestyle for the sake of future generations. Nisker skillfully shifts the focus away from melting glaciers and oil slicks and puts it squarely into neighborhoods and homes, so that average people can connect the dots between their actions and the environment.
 
The momentum for change continues online at www.garbagerevolution.com. Visitors are encouraged to become involved in changing their own communities through video, pictures and blogs. UUSG is helping to fuel the revolution by having available for sale that night reusable Chico shopping bags, Green Dry Greening bags from the Dry Greening Company in Willowbrook, and rain barrels to capture runoff from a home’s gutter system for use in watering landscaping. Rain barrel sales benefit The Conservation Foundation of Naperville.
 
Ann Drover of UUSG’s Green Sanctuary Committee says, “This film emphasizes considerably more than a story of a family and their three-month garbage episode. The adverse effects on other parts of the planet and other beings, resulting from our wasteful lifestyles, really hit home, and found the parts dealing with the rest of the story even more interesting than the family's travails.”
 
About UUSG
The Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, established in 1842 and the oldest church in Geneva, is a diverse, welcoming community. The society provides religious education and opportunities for spiritual growth, noting, “We encourage individual and mutual responsibility as together we work to be a liberal religious voice in the community and a force for compassionate social justice.”

For more information, visit www.uusg.org.