Eco Company Teens

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

It may look clean, but cotton has a big footprint in the world. Cotton growers use 11 percent of the world's pesticides and it takes more than 700 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to make just one T-shirt. But some farmers are doing things differently. Jordan heads out to the fields to find out how.

They call themselves the Creek Geeks, They're students from Loma Linda High School in Sacramento, CA, and they are the force behind the Arcade Creek Project. They do it all...habitat restoration, vertebrate (bird) cataloging, creek mapping, and biological assessment. It's all in a day’s work for this crew.

We are all accustomed to seeing solar panels on roofs and shading cars in parking lots. But you probably haven't seen mirrored solar panels that focus sunlight to generate heat that powers a large turbine? That's what happens in the Mojave Desert at one of the world's largest concentrated solar power installations. It's quite a sight to see.

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.

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!

The buses of the future...are here now! Forget the noisy engine and the plumes of black exhaust! These buses are clean and quiet and much more fuel efficient than your regulation diesel bus. They're powered by hydrogen fuel cells and Jalena hops on board to check them out.

There are a lot of things we can all do to be Eco-Wise, Here's just one idea.

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.

ZERO LITTER! Zip. Nada. Absolutely none. hat's the goal of a group of teens who are part of Earth Team in Northern California. And why should we settle for anything less than zero? These teens are tackling the problem with cell phones, pads and social media. It's not your parents litter drive!

Riley visits a facility using leftover food and other green waste to generate electricity! This high tech biodigester that uses the gases from the waste to produce power for the UC Davis campus.

Adam pays a visit to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation where scientists conduct research about plastic in the Earth's oceans. Sailing on the foundation's 50 foot catamaran, the researchers have traveled around the globe to trawl for plastic in the 5 major gyres where plastic debris gathers. What they find will shock you.

Brendan visits a High School in San Francisco where he finds students on campus AFTER SCHOOL! They are building a three-phase compost bin...from scratch. It's a good way to build a compost bin of your own.

There are a lot of things we can all do to be Eco-Wise. Here is one idea.

A raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles? Sailing from Los Angeles to Hawaii? Yep...Marcus Erickson, Joel Paschal and Anna Cummins did just that. Check it out.

High School students in California started the organization Students for Solar Schools. Their quest to get solar panels for their own high school grew into a network of high schools across the nation working together to bring solar power to education!

Eco Company visits San Francisco's Garden for the Environment to learn about the Urban Youth Sprouts program. In this program teens find out what growing food sustainably is all about. They grow vegetables, learn about food systems, and how to live a healthier lifestyle.

Summer Camp?...what a great time! We visit a summer camp at a unique location. It's called Common Ground and it's an environmental camp in the Summer and a charter high school in the Fall. They're teaching and preparing the environmental leaders of the future!

Riley visits a facility using leftover food and green waste to generate electricity! Leftovers and scraps are collected and sent to a new, high tech biodigester that uses it to create electricity. But it doesn't stop there! The waste bi-prodict from the biodigester is utilized to make fertilizer and compost for farms. That's what we call farm to fork to fuel to farm!

Brendan travels to the University of California at Davis to visit a wind energy lab! There researchers and students are working to improve the efficiency of wind turbines. They study how wind travels over the blades in a high speed wind tunnel!

Making bricks out of mud and baking cookies in a solar oven. Sounds like great fun, right! Jalena takes her shoes off on a visit to the School Farm to help stomp on the ingredients to make adobe bricks. It's squishy fun!

Jessica catches up with Ally Maize, the teen who founded the Green Youth Movement...GYM for short. Gym works with elementary and middle school students to develop green lifestyles at an early age. And Jessica gets a ride in Ally's unique electric car!

In part 2 of our profile of Santa Monica High School's award winning Team Marine, we follow the students into the classroom. There they regularly run water quality tests, work to lobby against single use plastic bags...and recently built a solar boat!

There is a green alternative to almost any product imaginable. But green guitars? A group of guitar manufacturers are working together to harvest tone wood sustainably and responsibly. Taylor Guitars is doing that and much more.

At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory they do a lot more than make unmanned spacecrafts. The scientists here spend a lot of time studying the earth, and specifically, climate change and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.