Greetings from Los Angeles! Here's our latest update:
Yesterday we spent the day at the San Diego Zoo, with passes given to us from some generous UU folks there. The zoo was fantastic and the kids were wide-eyed the whole time! Last night Carrick and I gave a presentation at the First UU Church in San Diego to a fun crowd and enjoyed visiting and some yummy vegan food before and after.
Today we did a lot of video work, starting at the Rainbow Material Recovery Facility in Huntington Beach outside of Los Angeles. We got the grand tour of the facility where they take all residential and commercial trash from the area and sort everything with machines and manually to pull out all the recycling and food waste. The state of California passed a law that waste haulers had to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill by 50% and the sorting facilities were the way to do it. Now they are considering upping it to 75% and eventually 100%! Also interesting was that in Massachusetts our waste disposal is about 4 times more expensive than here, so switching to this system would be very profitable.
Next stop was at the Tesla showroom in Los Angeles, to interview Chelsea Sexton, who some of you might know as the star of the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'. That documentary came out several years ago and profiled the rise and fall of GM's electric car from the 1990s, and Chelsea was a salesperson for that car who moved on to become a big advocate for electric cars in government and industry. Carrick talked to Chelsea about electric cars and their benefits, and their role in the future of the auto industry.
It turns out that Chelsea's husband Bob is the service manager at Tesla Motors, which makes the all-electric Tesla Roadster and upcoming all-electric sedan. Bob took Carrick and me out for a ride in a roadster and we were both absolutely blown away. That is one incredible ride - the acceleration is just unbelievable! It's like a high-speed roller coaster!
We have two reader questions today:
Question: This trips focus is to help educate the youth of America about Green living and Technology. How does that change your filming style, your eye for content, knowing your goal audience will be children?
Answer: Sometimes I have to remind the people we are interviewing to keep the answers general and not get too technical. Some of the people we've filmed so far are on the engineering end and it's easy for them to get too technical. What I'm trying to do is make 5-minute videos that provide a general overview that would be interesting for kids, but also for adults too. Our Holy Name wind turbine video is a good example of that.
Question: A humorous road anecdote?
Answer: One funny thing that comes to mind is when we were driving through Mississippi. We pulled off the highway to get something out of the cargo carrier on the roof, which has two little padlocks to keep it secure. I pulled out what we needed and left the set of keys on the roof and drove off down the highway, which to our horror and amazement we found somehow wedged into the roof frame! What are the chances, really?
More filming tomorrow in Los Angeles, with more stories to tell I'm sure.
Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org
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