Eco Company Teens

Eco Company visits the Monterey Bay Aquarium known throughout the world for it's conservation efforts. There are over 35,000 plants and animals in this amazing facility. Jordan gets a special tour with teen volunteers whose messages are music to our ears.

Lights, camera, ACTION! It's the studio where the student-run TV show "The Green Screen" is taped. These teens run the cameras, edit their stories, do the graphics and man the control booth for a monthly half-show that raises awareness about environmental issues. It's teens with a voice in their community!

Pavan Raj Gowda has had a passion for protecting the planet from a very early age. In the 2nd grade his short story about how individuals and communities need to work to protect the planet, later became part of a children's book he published. He published 2 more books in the 6th grade. At 8 he founded Green Kids Now and at 10 he hosted the first Green Kids Conference. Athenna sits down with him to find out what is driving him to action!

Steam power has been around for a long time! But it wasn't until the middle of the last century that man began tapping into the heat deep into the Earth to create steam to produce electricity on a large scale . We wanted to learn more so Jaden visited the largest geothermal power facility in the world!

We found a girl scout troop that has adopted a Northern California beach and is determined to keep it free of trash and waste. Jessica catches up with them on a beach clean-up day. Some of what they find is very surprising.

Meet Charlotte Kruk, a high school art teacher in San Jose, CA. Her art class gets all of their raw materials from discarded recyclable stuff. But this art teacher is also a fashion designer and uses candy wrappers to make all of her clothes! This you have to see.

Eco Company visits the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Jessica explores the rain forest dome and finds out why rain forests are so important to the delicate balance of our world-wide eco system.

The menus at most school cafeterias are filled with pizza, corn dogs, grilled cheese and such. But this cafeteria is different. It is run by Ann Cooper, the renegade lunch lady. She is on a mission to change the menu and provide fresh, organic and healthy foods for students.

Laura Webber is on a special mission. She is spearheading a drive to plant 1 million trees across the U.S. She has enlisted 24,000 members of 4-H clubs who are helping out! There is definitely more to gain than the simple satisfaction of getting the job done.

Eco Company visits the home of the San Francisco Giants. The Giants are one of the greenest teams in sports from the concession stands, to watering the field, to recycling and transportation to the park!

There is obviously a lot of trash that doesn't have a second use...or does it? Brendan went to a landfill where the trash goes 200 feet deep. Trash piles produce methane gas and this place is putting it to good use.

What's trash and what is food. Very often an albatross will not know the difference.

Adam visits a materials recovery facility to see what happens to all of the stuff we put into our recycling bins. Then he gets a lesson in the 4 “R”s. Knowing the importance of them will help you walk a green path in life.

Teens...as energy specialists? You bet! These teens are trained to do energy audits at residential homes. They learn ways to save energy, water and MONEY for all of us. It's the kind of house call that's greening up the planet...one neighborhood at a time.

The Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory studies ocean acidification and the effects on marine life. Some of those effects are being felt right now at Hog Island Oyster Company just a short drive down the road from the lab. Riley pays them a visit to find out more and enjoys some juicy oysters while she was there!!

Know your Eco-Lingo. What is ocean acidification?

Trees absorb carbon dioxide. Planting trees is a good way to be Eco-Wise.

Eco Company goes to South India where two California, teens have started a program to replace harmful tobacco farming with cultivation of the sustainable Jatropha plant to reduce deforestation and help a poverty stricken area.

We catch up with two Northern California High School students who have created their own line of eco-friendly clothing. Josy and Aza started Leftover Green Beans a few years back when they were asked to create a few dresses for a green New York fashion show. Since then they have continued to design creative fashions from vintage cloth and more.

Solar power has proven to be an effective form of clean energy. But Eco Company found a company doing it a bit differently. They use 8 foot balloons to capture the suns energy!! Brendan goes to check them out!

Adam visits with a global climate change expert at Chabot Space & Science Center to get the simple facts about global warming and what is causing it.

Jordan visits a company that is making cooking oil, motor oil, biodiesel fuel and regular gas for our cars from Algae...yes ALGAE! Could this be the fuel of the future?

Jessica visits the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. In this special facility they are building the world's largest laser...actually 192 lasers that create nuclear fusion to create the same kind of energy that happens on the sun. It's 100% clean energy and produces no reactive waste!

Where does all the plastic and trash go once it gets into the Pacific Ocean? A lot of it ends up in the Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of swirling waters twice the size of Texas. A scientific mission called Project Kaisei takes us out to the Northern Pacific Gyre. What we see there is very shocking.

It was an off-shore oil rig eruption near Santa Barbara in 1969 that inspired a group of activists to establish the first Earth Day. Adam speaks one-on-one talk with one of those founders. Denis Hayes says the impact of that first Earth Day was more than they could have hoped for or dreamed about.