‘Waste Time’ is the third episode in the ‘As You Open Your Eyes’ series about community change.
Conscious of being surrounded by a polluted ocean and of the absence of a functioning waste management system, the inhabitants of the small Moluccan island of Saparua had no choice but to mobilize their own forces and find local solutions to the global environmental problem that affects their daily lives.
Waste Time shows how a diverse group of people from the teacher, the domina, the shop owner to school children take action together and find creative solutions to reduce, reuse and process waste. They are supported in this by Moluccan lessons of the common law, the adat. After all, “if we don’t do it, who will?” is what the traditional guardian of nature, kewang Uncle Eli, sings to us: ‘Sio sapa lae kalo bukang katong dua’.