A warm welcome to our new Green Teen Editor, Zach McGrath, with his first post for Alternative Consumer.

Okay, here’s a concise list of my favorite eco-celebs,
(in no particular order). Enjoy!

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus – Her new home with husband Brad Hall is practically a poster for green efficiency.

• Alanis Morissette – On my list more because I like her and less because she excels at being green, but nonetheless has added things such as solar panels and hybrids to her repertoire.

• Regina Spektor – This not-too-well-known singer/pianist attended Tennessee’s Bonnaroo 2007 along with Alexa Ray Joel and others. This concert’s no Live Earth, but it helps educate and entertain on a green basis.

• Morgan Freeman – Drives an electric car and helps educate about being kind to the environment through speeches and interviews. Basically a cool guy.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger – I know The Governator wouldn’t be the first person thought of when eco-friendly is mentioned, but he actually has been working in California to encourage the installment of solar panels in one million new homes over the next 13 years.

• Harrison Ford- won the Global Environmental Citizen Award (2002) and is vice chairman of the Board of Conservation International (CI), on which he has served for more than ten years.

Others (such as Ashton Kutcher, Jack Black, and Sting) have made small steps toward the new “green and famous” look (which seems to be the trend these days) by driving eco-friendly cars and *gasp* recycling. Not the biggest achievement, I know, but still, it’s progress.

In Other News…

Surprising Decisions:

Uh Oh! Some celebs have been caught being not-so-green. Others have unearthed as being more green than they seem at first. Here are a few of the most surprising:

• Leonardo DiCaprio – Although Leonardo DiCaprio refuses to drive a gas-eating SUV or German-made car like most other celebrities, and owns an environmentally friendly hybrid car, he still refuses to give up his private planes, which use up more gas than 20 SUV’s put together.

• Al Gore – “What?! I thought Al Gore was leading the way in eco-friendliness?!” Not lately. He’s on the fence. While he has done some great things, he’s recently made some bad decisions. The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, according to bills reviewed by The Associated Press. The typical Nashville household uses about 15,600 kilowatt-hours per year. The group said that Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours last year and that his average monthly electric bill was $1,359. So really the decision is up to you whether to love him or hate him. Personally, I loved An Inconvenient Truth, but this surprised me.

• John Travolta- While lecturing fans to “do their bit” when it comes to global warming, he’s done quite a bit on the contrary with his five private planes. Clocking up at least 30,000 flying miles in the past 12 months, he has produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions – nearly 100 times the average Briton’s tally.

• George W. Bush – Surprisingly, evidence has surfaced that the Dubulyah may actually be a closet green. His Crawford, Texas, Winter White House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling. Surprising.

Green Quote of the Week

“There is a planet and then there’s us. We are the new dinosaurs. And if we aren’t careful, we’re going to wind up just like the old ones did.” – Morgan Freeman