The Green

Everything has an environmental impact. Eating a peanut butter & jelly sandwich may seem like an insignificant and commonplace activity, but in reality there is a huge amount of infrastructure, energy and money required for a person to have the option of eating a PB&J sandwich. This topic is so important that Sundance Channel decided to create a new series specifically to investigate all the environmental impacts of producing products.

For the purposes of introducing the new show, you can think of the life cycle of a product as an "ECO-TRIP." Taking an ECO-TRIP means a thorough investigation of all the work that goes into making, shipping, selling and finally, using a product. The new series, entitled ECO-TRIP, will be hosted by David Mayer de Rothschild. Mr. de Rothschild has invested much of the time in his life towards being an ecologically concerned person. From the lifestyle he leads to the business he chooses to conduct, Mr. de Rothschild always wants to do something healthy for the environment. You can read more about the host on his wikipedia page [en.wikipedia.org].

Subaru, a fixture in the auto industry, is demonstrating their commitment to the green movement by sponsoring the ECO-TRIP series on Sundance Channel. With the idea of making the world more ecologically sustainable right now, Subaru's ECO-TRIP show focuses on educating people about the impact they make on the world with their consumer purchases. To find out more about Subaru and their automobiles, check out a small map marker group that goes into some details about two of their manufacturing plants [www.sundancechannel.com].

ECO-TRIP will be available in the near future, so keep checking your Greenzines [www.sundancechannel.com] for more details.

Trying to understand all the forces at work in the production of countless consumer products quickly becomes a lesson in complexity. In order to educate people about the life cycle of products, ECO-TRIP will uncover the real cost of certain iconic products, from manufacturing the products to the point where the products are purchased by consumers. While there is not enough time in any show to fully educate people about every type of product, by investigating a few example products, people can become more familiar with the process of considering a product on more levels than its price and quality.

The importance of being an educated consumer cannot be downplayed in a country like America. Considering that the talking heads of our government and our do-little-environmental business leaders have said "We are addicted to oil," but have done next to nothing to change this fact, perhaps the commercial consumers of America have a greater role to play in shaping the environmental future of the country.