WALL-E Trash Towers: An Exploration of Modern-Day Waste Production
Date
2022-12
Authors
Larkin, Andrew
Major Professor
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Howe, Adina
Committee Member
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Abstract
The movie WALL-E is different from nearly every other Pixar movie ever released. Instead of showing a bright and fun world, it instead opens on a skyline filled with spires of trash. The first few minutes are dedicated to nothing but showing how Earth has become uninhabitable due to the unregulated production of waste. This raises the question, was this movie’s message merely a hypothetical? A good way to compare this movie to our reality is to look at the formation of the trash towers and see how long it would take to create the garbage needed to fill one of these towers. By looking at the modern-day trash production rates and finding the height of one of the towers, we are able to see how long it would take to create the material to build one. I am also looking at how the size of the towers in the movie compares to skyscrapers in real life so that we can get a more grounded sense of what the trash towers would look like in real life. When we do this, we can get a better idea if WALL-E depicts a realistic look of our future.
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