Environmental film to be shown to coincide with Earth Day in Guelph

The Rotary Club of Guelph will be hosting a movie night to celebrate International Earth Day.

The organization will be showing Emmy-awarding winning documentary The Story of Plastic at the Bookshelf Cinema on Quebec Street on April 22.

Carolyn Weatherson, co-chair of the Rotary Club’s environment committee, said three local experts will speak in a live Q&A after the film, including Lindsay Oman from the Refill Store.

“She’s absolutely been so incredibly generous,” Weatherson said. “We’ve got this great prize basket that’s available for one lucky participant, you’re automatically entered to win, and she’s giving a little gift to every single person that comes as well.

Madeleine Myhill, waste production coordinator from the city of Guelph, will be a part of the Q&A as well as Manjusri Misra, a professor from the University of Guelph and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Biocomposites.

She said the three experts are a great fit to raise awareness on the issues.

Weatherson hopes people can attend and begin to deepen their understanding of the crisis we’re facing.

This year’s theme is Planet Vs. Plastics and Weatherson said she is trying hard to raise awareness on the campaign through other initiatives, most of which are shared on social media.

She said there’ll be multiple activities to participate in around the city as well.

“We have a tree planting and environmental fair happening on April 27,” she said. “We’ll be planting about 1,500 trees. There’s a huge environmental fair and you can get food, visit a variety of booths and it’ll be an absolutely amazing day, so you can take action that day on the environment and have a good time as well.”

Weatherson said there are solutions to help make our community more environmentally friendly.

In order to invoke change, she said we’re more powerful than we think.

“It’s challenging as a consumer,” she said. “We’ve all seen how grocery stores and just other consumer goods are wrapped in an incredible amount of plastic these days, way more than they ever were. So it’s a challenge as a consumer but we can do it.”

The doors open at 6:30 p.m. and it’s a pay-what-you-can model.

The film starts at 7 p.m.