FLUSH

In America, we’ve been taught to feel ashamed of our excrement, our trash, and the negative “shit” in our lives, leaving us unhappy and disconnected from our bodies, our earth and each other. What our public sanitation infrastructure cannot hide, we render invisible through social taboos.

While recent social and environmental movements help reconnect us to our bodies and the earth, their emphasis on sustainable products and foods reinforces a consumption-based paradigm. This same-thinking cannot solve the problems it created. Instead, we must broaden our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the world, seeing ourselves not only as consumers, but also creators, producers and, frankly, poopers. As society is created by the people living in it, we must address this “flush and forget” paradigm directly at the site of the body, and watch it trickle outwards.

In other words, it’s time to take responsibility for our shit.

We now have startling evidence that poop culture in America has serious consequences. 1 out of every 15 kids struggles with constipation. The toilet is the #1 water consumer in our homes. We fertilize our crops with oil-based chemicals, while our nutrient rich "waste" pollutes our waterways.

FLUSH follows the emotional stories of individuals trying to make sense of their relationship to this complex and hidden act, and a group of American activists transforming poop from something taboo into something that connects us all.