Oil Diet: Recipes for Disaster

Do you know how much oil you use per day? Neither did director John Webster. In 2005 he decided to make a documentary about oil from his own families perspective. How would it be to live a life without fossile-based products? John put a ban on things packaged in plastic like food, makeup, shampoo, toothpaste and kids’ toys in order to reduce their carbon footprint. “Recipes for disaster” (2008) is the result of a one year oil-detox.

From the director’s statement:
“(…) The first concern of every film maker is how to make the subject matter visible. One of the difficulties of this subject, and the great tragedy of the world, is that greenhouse gasses are invisible. So too, is the 31 billion barrels (1 barrel = 159 litres) of oil the world consumes every year. When that oil is burnt, it releases as much carbon as a forest fire four times the size of France. If France was burnt to cinder every three months, we would be aware of it, but somehow the oil we use (and mostly burn) fails to catch our attention.”