Alter Eco is one of the first shows I saw on the new Planet Green TV station. This is a Discovery Channel station and focuses totally on being "Green". I found the first episode of the show to be pretty interesting. The though that Adrian Grenier was doing his part of being green was pretty cool. Here's a guy who is spending extra money to completely remodel this house in the Hollywood Hills to make it totally "Green".
So based on that episode I thought it was really cool that Adrian utilizes the show to talk about all the stuff he's going to do on his house as well as some really cool ideas that his friends explore. The friends are Boise Thomas who is into finding ways to do things green, Darren Moore, who owns his eco-remodelling company called Ecovations and Angela Lindvall, a fashion model who runs a non-profit eco friendly company called Collage.
So the show really focuses on the three friends and the cool things they do to help out people from many different companies. Yes, there's a lot of advertizing plugs, but all for good reason. Like when they put some sort of converter on the Paul Frank bus to get it better gas mileage or they went to Sheperd Fairey's house to help build a nursery and brought a mobile food unit to his office to feed the people. Those along with making a nice compost bin for a family with limited space. Some pretty cool stuff is done by the three of them.
So the three of them are the backbone of the show and really Adrian Grenier and Rick Byrd play small roles in the show, but not nearly as effective as the other three. Adrian shows up in the first episode and then every once in a while he makes an appearence. Rick Byrd is on each episode, at first I thought he was a goofball and a bit annoying, but he grows on you that's for sure. By the later part of the season he seems to have loosened up and is a pretty cool dude. Seeing that the show hasn't even finished airing it's first season and Big Rick already has the house for sale. What's that all about, bought for something like $1.2 million and selling for $3.5 million after all the work. Claiming it to be LEED certified Platinum - and the first and only of it's kind in Los Angeles. Maybe it really is LEED Platinum, but what documentation is needed for that to be proven?
Here's a Link to Alter Eco Dundee House to see that it is the place. It says that the owner of the house is Rick Byrd not Adrian Grenier, so what's the story? I still think that the show has a lot of value added to it, by the things they do to the house as well as the things the other three do out on their adventures. Not sure what is up with the whole selling of the house and was it always the plan or did it just work out that way.
Personally if Rick Byrd is really building and promoting LEED homes, that's pretty cool and I regardless of his profits, he's still doing something good in the end.
Still outside of that little BS move on the show, I would love to see Darren, Boise & Angela continue on with or without the others as they really seem to put a lot into the show and really were the stars. I don't know where all the ideas came from, but the different things they did really make you start to think about some of the things you can do.
I like the episode where they went to Cochella and show all the cool art and green ways of making things. I think they should catch up with Jack Johnson and the Village Green area at each of his shows when they are out in So Cal in the near future. I know Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews and others are doing something like what Jack is doing, but Jack really speaks well to it and has some awesome folks out at the shows. Some local farmers and green groups as well as some others like Surfrider Foundation and the Rise Above Plastics Pledge to elimate the use of plastic bags and bottles, a good cause in my book.
So certainlly check out this show and see all the cool stuff that you can do and places around LA you can visit. I would love to see it continue on in the future, no need to spin off as a star having his house built maybe as much as Rick has a new project and the crew is going to team up to help get it done and during the episodes, continue to do the little things they do.
Excellent show!
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