Green TV

Theres an amazing amout of TV concerned with the environment at the moment. A reality TV program Dumped (www.channel4.com/lifestyle/green/dumped/index.html) where a group of people lived on waste, raising awareness on what useful things are being thrown away. At the end of the series they looked at who had the lowest eco footprint, which was quite interesting, two students with ought cars who couldn't afford holidays won, despite their being not specially interested in Green issues. One of their advisers was from C.A.T. , the Centre for Alternative Technology, (www.cat.org.uk/news/news_release.tmpl?command=search&db=news.db&eqSKUdatarq=36990&home=1).

Afterwards Channel 4 ran 'The Great Green Debate Show', where they pitted climate sceptics against eco experts. The debate was quite interesting, but they gave far too much time to people who insisted on repeating the same old tiered excuses, like if China doesn’t cut down why should we, which would lead to everyone increasing their waste indefinitely. The eco experts included Tony Juniper from Friends of the Earth and someone from the Met Office, and oddly Michael Meacher who failed as Environment Minister to reduce climate emissions. Tony did well, but he was a lone voice of sanity amongst people saying 'were paying too much eco taxes on cars' despite evidence that it gets relatively cheaper to run cars every year.

On BBC3 Outrageous Wasters takes families with a large eco footprint, (one family with an energy bill of £2000 a year, 5 times national average) takes them to a camp where they live a basic lifestyle and learn to cut down on their power and water use. They then go home and try to apply what they have learned. One of the best bits was a less wasteful shower, and using their wee as fertiliser on the garden. They don’t do much to promote energy efficient cars, for those that need a car, or more importantly to cut down on car use. Also they don’t do much to insulate their home, instead focusing on gimmicks like a wind powered games room for teenagers to play their electronic toys.

Its good to see so much focus on green issues, lots of important information was there for those prepared to listen. A shame they didn’t do a bit better though, insulating the home should be the first step towards reducing waste.

Added 12 sept 07, In the latest Outrageous Wasters they insulated a house and discussed more efficient cars, the best episode yet.