Saving the environment isn't just for Earth Day. Meet real people with "Big Ideas" who are making extraordinary efforts to live a sustainable life. Each episode of Robert Redford's The Green discusses a different topic each week to give the audience advice for living a greener life.
Are there any topics that are of particular interest to you? Do the efforts seem practical? Could you see yourself or your community taking part in any of these efforts?
The initial schedule for The Green's "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" is as follows:
Tuesday, April 17th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Fuel”- Joel Woolf, alternative-fuel enthusiast and inventor of Veg Powered Systems, drag races his truck fueled by the vegetable oil from a fried-chicken tailgate party; Colette Brooks, a fanatic for muscle cars and Prada shoes, leads a bio-diesel PR campaign that hooks up clients with diesel cars around the country; and Indy Racing League’s Jeff Simmons prepares for the 2007 season by suiting up for a test drive in a car that runs on 100% ethanol.
Tuesday, April 24th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Build” – Visionary architect Michelle Kaufmann builds a Glidehouse, an ultra-sustainable modular prefab dream home, for a couple looking to enjoy life off the grid; architect Carlton Brown defies all odds and builds a low-income sustainable housing project in Harlem; and MIT genius Mitchell Joachim demonstrates his Fab Tree Hab living house made from intertwined trees, creating a spectacular living space of the future.
Tuesday, May 1st, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Cities” – Portland real estate developer Dennis Wilde is the pioneering force behind the South Waterfront project, which is turning a polluted brown field into a flourishing sustainable community; Trey Taylor, co-founder of Verdant Power puts years of research, engineering design and money to the test when he submerges the first two underwater turbines in New York City’s East River in the hopes that it will light up the skyline using renewable energy; and Heather Flores and her band of guerilla gardeners work overnight to beautify blighted urban plots of unused land with local plants and flowers.
Tuesday, May 8th , 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Wear”- Eco-couture designer Linda Loudermilk creates an outfit for Robert Downey Jr. and prepares for a fashion show in New York featuring her eco-friendly designs made from sustainable materials; Jill Dumain, head of Patagonia’s environmental products division, spearheads the company’s cutting edge sportswear line, which recycles used soda bottles and worn out garments to produce high quality active wear; and Lori Petitti, hosting her first Swap-O-Rama-Rama, invites people to channel their creative energies into constructing new fashion statements from used clothing and fabric that would have previously been thrown away.
Tuesday, May 15th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Eat” Up-and-coming chef Kris Morningstar takes us on a tour of his new green restaurant Blue Velvet, where the food is grown locally, the décor is created from sustainable products, and the rooftop is morphing into a high concept produce garden; Local Burger owner Hilary Brown buys sustainable meat and produce from farms within 100 miles of her restaurant and challenges a fast-food addict to eat off the Local Burger menu for a month; Tom Szaky, young entrepreneur and CEO of TerraCycle, finds treasure in another man’s trash with his 100% green fertilizer line made from worm “poo” and packaged in recycled bottles.
Tuesday, May 22nd, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Drive” Silicon Valley-based Tesla Motors debuts their limited edition high-performance electric car (0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds) to a select lucky few who get to test drive the $100,000 sports car of the future; entrepreneur Dana Myers shows off the assembly line of Myers Motors’ brightly colored and often comical looking “NmG” (No more Gas), an affordable electric commuter car; and Lowell Simmons and his Miramar High School Electric Vehicle Competition Team get ready for the Battery Beach Burnout by making final revisions on their electric vehicle in order to compete in a variety of road rally and auto-cross events
Tuesday, May 29th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Furnish” Furniture company Herman Miller’s engineers Scott Charon and Gabe Wing explore green design as the leaders of the Design for the Environment team, developing sustainable concepts as the company strives to make all new lines of furniture 100% sustainable by the year 2020; Scrapile furniture designers Carlos Salgado and Bart Bettencourt scour their neighborhood for leftover scrap wood and then head back to their studio to cut, glue and sand the pieces into sleek recycled furniture; Jaime and Isaac Salm, owners of the Philadelphia-based design firm MIO, prove that it’s possible to live in “green style” without breaking the bank with their innovative home-product designs.
Tuesday, June 5th , 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Create”: World-renowned photographer Subhankar Banerjee documents the biodiversity and indigenous cultures of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to demonstrate the effects of global warming in Alaska and the potentially devastating effects of drilling for oil; artist Alyce Santoro weaves together audiotape from the “technotrash” that is crowding our landfills, and creates a durable new material that has a “voice” of its own which used to manufacture clothing, upholstery and boating sails; and prolific green architect David Hertz takes on his most ambitious project to date: creating a house made from a retired 747 airplane in a remarkable show of sustainable reuse and "upcycling."
Tuesday, June 12th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Kids” Eleven-year old activist Evan Green hosts a kick-off party to recruit new members for his Red Dragon Conservation Team, a group of kids and adults dedicated to saving the rainforest and fostering biodiversity; a group of students from the educational initiative “Plastics are Forever” collects used containers from a Los Angeles waterway and creates rafts from the trash to float down the creek; and toy-maker Barbera Aimes, founder of ImagiPLAY, creates non-toxic toys made from renewable rubberwood and recycled cardboard.
Tuesday, June 19th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Paper or Plastic” (U.S. Television Premiere) - The United States Post Office teams up with William McDonough to develop a “cradle to cradle” policy that will reduce the USPS’s environmental impact; Frederic Scheer of Cereplast creates biodegradable containers made from corn and potato starch; and the designers at Ford present a tour of the recyclable Model U, a concept car that embodies the “cradle to cradle” principle with its hydrogen fuel cell supercharged engine featuring high fuel efficiency and recyclable or biodegradable parts.
Tuesday, June 26th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Sports” Bicyclist Craig Calfee’s unusual bike design uses a highly sustainable resource – bamboo – to build a bicycle stronger than steel for champion cyclo-cross athlete Dorothy Wong; Jason Salfi, co-founder of Comet Skateboards, shows off his solar-powered facility where skateboards are made from sustainable materials and introduces us to the students who are producing artwork for these eco-friendly boards; and World Champion Freeskier Alison Gannett launches her “Global Cooling Tour” to highlight the impacts of global warming on the business of winter sports.
Tuesday, July 3rd , 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Work” Mathias Wackernagel, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint, audits a Bay Area company in an effort to show it how to reduce it’s environmental impact; Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch, the founders of New Belgium Brewing Company, demonstrate their dedication to the environment and to their employees by creating an ideal working environment; and David Hertz, founder and president of Syndesis Inc., introduces the office of the future.
Tuesday, July 10th, 9:00pme/p
“Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Pray” The Reverend Fletcher Harper inspires environmental concern in the religious world with GreenFaith, an interfaith coalition dedicated to greening places of worship and taking action against polluters; Judy Bonds, director of Coal River Mountain Watch, uses her faith to galvanize local communities in the battle against the mining companies who are destroying their homes; and avid diver Don Brawley gives life to the cremated remains of the dead by including their “cremains” into a man-made reef that supports coral re-growth in the Florida Keys.
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Do you have a "Big Idea" for the environment. Join The Green to learn more about Robert Redford's new television series about sustainable living. To join, click here.
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