At Hollywood Goes Green: Baseball meets eco-toilet paper

Will environmentalism give you a toilet paper obsession? Possibly. Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that after getting the Oscars to switch to recycled-content toilet paper, he spent the event in the bathroom to see if people were reading the little signs about the switch. "People thought I was a pervert," he joked at his keynote at Hollywood Goes Green.

Allen's helped green many Hollywood events -- and the entertainment business as a whole -- often by doing research into the supply chain, figuring out things like where oil for CD jewel cases come from, how much resources are saved by making the liner notes out of recycled paper, and what happens to those items at the end of their lifecycle.

His talk worked to connect the green initiatives taken in these efforts to the issues of biodiversity and environmental impact. In fact, the connections he tried to make were so vast that the talk did wander a bit, covering everything from deforestation to waterborne diseases to species extinction to waste to Darfur.

But Allen came back to the entertainment industry. Because it's so culturally influential, "this industry has a unique opportunity to move us beyond the circumstance we are at right now in terms of raising consciousness and stimulating understanding," Allen said.

To underscore his point, Allen screened a short video, narrated by Robert Redford, about Major League Baseball's new greening initiative. In conjunction with NRDC, the National Baseball League's going to green its stadiums and business practices, using more recyclable products, conserving energy, getting rid of toxic chemicals, and educating baseball fans, hopefully making environmental consciousness part of America's national pastime. The initiative seems to be in the beginning stages; any baseball fans seen this greening in action yet?

Allen ended the talk by -- going back to toilet paper. If you do one thing for the environment, change your toilet paper, he said. After all, why cut down ancient forests for a product you'll use for just 5 seconds?

To that end, here's a review of recycled toilet papers done by the funny people at Grist. And below's a funny video from Greenpeace activists who infiltrated a Kleenex advertising shoot to draw attention to the "Kleercut"-ing of ancient forests.

I got a chance to chat with Allen after his talk; more on that -- as well as some pictures -- to come --