Where does your paper napkin come from? What is the real cost of enjoying your chocolate? And what happens to your cellphone after you have moved on to a newer, flashier model? To help you answer these questions, Sundance Channel recently launched their new eco series - Eco Trip: The Cost of Living hosted by environmentalist and founder of Adventure Ecology, David de Rothschild, the son of a wealthy UK banking family.
Eco Trip traces the real eco-life of common everyday objects tracing them through their lifecycle from production to disposal, while revealing the environmental, social and health effects along the way.
In the premiere episode, aired on Earth Day (April 22, 2009), Rothschild pursued chocolate from the plantation where it is grown to the companies that make organic chocolate.
Chocolate is an important subject for Americans, considering that they devour 3.5 billion pounds a year, almost 11.5lbs (5.4kgs) per person.
But unfortunately for chocolate lovers, there is both a sweet and a bitter side to the six billion dollar global chocolate industry. Eco Trip looks at the eco-footprints of organic and non-organic chocolate and also explores the effect of the primary ingredients that go into making chocolate including sugar and milk.
Rothschild’s chocolate eco-trip starts in the Dominican Republic where he visits an organic cocoa plantation and follows the cocoa beans through the harvesting, fermentation process and drying stages while explaining how cocoa is grown in other parts of the world with heavy pesticide use and deforestation.
Did you know that buying organic chocolate actually works to preserve the rainforest? Or that it takes 400 beans to make just one pound of chocolate.
After the Dominic Republic, he travels around the globe to learn more about the impacts of the sugar crop and producing milk for the world’s sweet tooth, finally finishing up his chocolate journey in an organic chocolate factory.
This is the most riveting and interesting account of chocolate you will probably ever see. Who knew that chocolate beans appear like slimy aliens when they come out of the cocoa pod? “It looks a bit gross,” observes Rothschild when he first sees it. However, after tasting the freshly picked beans, he remarks that it tastes better than a chocolate bar.
Future episodes focus on the eco-footprint of Cotton T-Shirts, Gold Rings, Paper Napkins, Light-bulbs, Bottled Water, Cellphones and Salmon.
Eco Trip is highly entertaining, engaging and informative. Absolutely everything you want in an eco-series.
Fans of Eco Trip will love the brilliant book, Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down The Sources Of My Stuff by British author and journalist Fred Pearce. In Confessions, Pearce travels around the globe to find out the footprint of common everyday objects.
Visit: http://www.sundancechannel.com/ecotrip/
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