This article originally appeared on EcoStiletto.com, a website dedicated to sustainable, eco-friendly, green and organic fashion and health.
Leilani Munter encapsulates the ecoista’s dilemma: It’s all well and good to want to live sustainably until you work in an industry that doesn’t share your views. What are you supposed to do, quit your job?
Leilani takes this concept to an extreme most of us can’t even imagine. That’s because she is—if you haven’t already guessed from the photos—a racecar driver. Not just any racecar driver, mind you, Leilani has serious on-track cred. She’s the fourth woman in history to race in the Indy Pro Series. She set the record for the highest finish for a female driver in the history of the Texas Motor Speedway when she finished fourth in 2006. Sports Illustrated named her one of the top 10 female racecar drivers in the world.
The girl really can’t drive 55. More like 200.
But all that speed takes a serious environmental toll—and Leilani knows it. When we asked her what her eco-sin was she answered, “That’s easy: My racecar.”
Leilani also sees her profession as an opportunity to inspire positive change in the 100 million fans that make racing the number-one spectator sport in America. “If I was just another vegetarian, tree hugging, biology graduate asking people to give up meat and stop using plastic bags, I don’t know how many people would be listening to me,” Leilani told us. “But because I drive a racecar, I have an ability to reach a new audience of people that most environmentalists are probably not talking to.” (more…)
July 7th, 2010 by Amanda Crater. Posted in Entertainment, Living, Transportation
By Lauren Selman of Reel Green Media
One of the most influential players in the success of this new environmental movement is entertainment and media. From movies to plays, to magazines and webisodes, entertainment and media frame what is happening in the world in a creative way in order to make the message more available. Entertainers by nature are our society’s storytellers and have the unique talent of raising social issues, showing the unseen and challenging us to think differently. Believe it or not, as the recession creeps at a petty pace, people are still going out to the movies and catching a play here or there. As the world gets harder to face, entertainment serves as a means for us to escape realty and look at our world a little differently.
When it comes to the environment, entertainment serves as an integral vehicle of change and information. Think about it. When the message of global warming went to the silver screen with “An Inconvenient Truth,” people began to pay attention. When celebrities started sporting hybrids and dressing in organic threads, more and more people are “going green.” Previously environmentalists were a select few who participated in protests and ate things called organic foods, but today the faces of environmentalism are celebrities who have taken a stand to protect the environment like Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Alicia Silverstone, Bette Midler, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Many members of the community serve on the boards of various environmental groups, while others donate and/or host fundraisers for specific organizations.
When looking at environmental entertainment, there are two areas to explore—content and production. Environment Content is when the message, script and theme of the story carries environmental importance. Think of this like the environmental documentaries, network television how-to shows and “green” programming. Whereas Environmental Production, the less explored area of this topic, is focused on what does it take to make the content—the energy used, the water consumed, the miles traveled and the overall footprint of a movie, play, commercial or television show. Increasingly, this is beginning to change. Filmmakers, theater owners and big production studios are taking on climate change by adopting environmental practices into their means of production, but more can always be done.
If we look at the environment as being the context in which entertainment is created, we can begin to see a larger picture of the environmental impact of filmmaking.
March 30th, 2010 by Steve. Posted in Entertainment, Media
