Earlier this year, Ecorazzi reported that Leno had started a segment on his show called the Green Car Challenge, where celebrities take turns racing around a homemade track in a specially prepared Ford Focus-based battery car. While racing, the famous contestants face a variety of challenges, including cut-outs of Al Gore and Ed Begley Jr.

About his inspiration to start the challenge, Leno told Starpulse.com:

“Whenever I would drive a green car, like an electric car, when I drove it to the show, the female guests would go, ‘What is that? Does that not use gas?’ And a lot of times, without sounding sexist, the guys are interested in cars, the women could care less. But this is something where the women will go, ‘Hey, how does that work?’ And they’re really interested.”

So how does Sheryl Crow do? You’ll have to watch the video below to find out!

This year’s “Green Week” on NBC is turning out to be its best ever — with green themes on shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and now this genius eco-jam medley from Jimmy Fallon.

Seriously, it’s no easy task to come up with something entertaining and environmentally-themed — but Fallon’s 4-minute guitar jam hits it on all levels. Not to mention the guy can actually sing and play.

Prepare to rock out to green versions of Amy Winehouse (”They tried to make me buy a hybrid…”), Justin Timberlake (”I’m bringing bottles back…”), and Jay-Z (”Check out these new floors…”) among others.

Jane Goodall is one of my all-time favorite people! A tireless advocate for compassion, Jane has proudly earned her title as “UN Messenger of Peace.”

Goodall recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss her lifetime of work. In the interview, she talks about the dangers of keeping wild animals as pets, saying:

“The full range of chimp emotion is the same as ours. It’s exactly the same. They have a dark side, they have a bright side. But I’ve worked with chimpanzees in the wild for nearly 50 years, they don’t bite off our faces. They’re not meant to be in homes — they’re wild animals.”

Amen!

Goodall also discusses her organization, Roots and Shoots, which engages and inspires young people to work for human, environmental and animal issues. I mean can she get any cooler? Check out the video out below the fold to hear more of what Jane has to say!

Leave it to Audi’s marketing division to come up with a green commercial that also manages to insult anyone using alternative transportation.

Ride the bus? You suck. Ride a bike? You suck harder. Ride a Segway through a busy city walkway? Ok, they have a point there.

Oh yea, and for anyone using a biodiesel vehicle, prepare to get passed by some smug asshole in a diesel Audi. There, don’t you feel better about their environmental message? Check it out below:

H/T Chris Baskind

Incaseyadidntknow, the incredibly reputable production house and distributor Focus Features is actually the art house film division of NBC Universal.  Among the myriad award-winning films they have produced is uber-green film Away We Go. In conjunction with NBCU’s Green is Universal Week, FilmInFocus caught up with Meredith Bergmann of Green Media Solutions, the company that works with Universal to get green. Most recently she worked on Nancy Meyers’ holiday comedy, It’s Complicated (starring Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep & Steve Martin) and she talked in good detail about the green efforts on-set.

“The goal with It’s Complicated was to try to apply sustainable filmmaking practices to a major motion picture and to figure out what the obstacles are,” says Bergmann. She noted that the difference in scale between Away We Go and It’s Complicated brought to light new issues that the filmmakers, Universal and Green Media Solutions attempted to address.

“We started to realize how important the role of set dressing was when the production used one ton of produce in order to recreate a farmers market. Normally a portion of the produce would be given away, but, however, most would be discarded and would end up as landfill. So, instead, over one ton of fruits and vegetables used during the Santa Barbara farmer’s market scene was…donated to Casa Esperanza, a local soup kitchen in Santa Barbara. That ton of food fed 500 people for a week.”

She also notes that NBCU has teamed up with Rock and Wrap it Up, who will find beneficiaries for all edible leftover food from their productions. “This initiative will: fight poverty by helping to reduce hunger; improve our environment by diverting waste from landfills; and reduce the production’s bottom line by reducing waste disposal costs.”

They also piloted an alternative fuels program during the It’s Complicated production in which they used biodiesel for principle production but also for lighting the stage. Bergmann says, “From May through the end of June we used biodiesel, B20, for both generators for the main stage. There was no flickering. Nobody noticed, nobody knew.” The next step, I’d say, is to tell them and slake any ridiculous fears that biodiesel is any less effective than petro. Just my two cents…

Bergmann also talks about the green efforts over at Jimmy Fallon and SNL as well as the release of the Green is Universal Sustainable Film and Television Production Guide which you can download. Check out the whole article at FilmInFocus.com.

As part of NBC’s “Green Week” from their Green is Universal initiative, The Office is tackling the subject of recycling. Needless to say, Dwight Shrute takes things to the extreme.

At least I know what I want to be for Halloween next year.

Planet Green has picked up a pitch for a reality show called Beekman Farm. The show is described by Variety as having “a modern-day ‘Green Acres’ spin about two New York City expatriates who head upstate to run a farm…and seek to develop a line of organic products for their company under the Beekman 1802 brand.”

According to Variety, Beekman Farm will “mix rural business and irreverence” in its focus on Josh Kilmer-Purcell, an ad exec, drag queen and author and his partner Brent Ridge, a doctor who has served as VP for healthy living for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

For the record, I read about these guys quite a while back in Vanity Fair and, to the magazine’s credit, Kilmer-Purcell’s drag queendom was not used as a selling point.  It sounds a bit from the treatment in Variety that the company, Beekman 1802, and its organic product line are being built from scratch for this TV show which is absolutely not the case. The couple have been living and working on the farm and building the brand since 2007.

According to their website, “Beekman 1802 is committed to environmental sustainability,  supporting local micro-economies, and developing debt-free business models.” Although the products are not vegan, I have a feeling that these guys are pretty right-on. They note that the farm “is dedicated to raising animals using the most comfortable and humane farming and husbandry practices possible. The Beekman goats, which provide milk for our soap and cheeses, graze freely on the pastures and range in number from fifty to over one hundred depending on the season.”

Good intentions aside at Planet Green though, seems to me like they’ve got a more flamboyant “gay goat farmer” angle in mind. “Their eccentric, extended friends and family dynamic reveals to viewers that trying to live the simple life isn’t so simple after all,” said Planet Green honcho Laura Michalchyshyn.

I still think I kind of want to watch this.

NBC’s Green Week is kicking off this Sunday and we’ve got a few scoops on what’s in store for two of our favorite shows.

Even our super (not) secret sources at GE have only been told so much about plot lines for The Office but here’s what we’ve got: “Dwight Schrute from The Office gets into a green character, assuming the role of ‘Recyclops.’” Nothing could go wrong there…

The folks behind 30 Rock, however, are a little more forthcoming. In the upcoming ep, Jack gets the word from above that TGS needs to reduce it carbon footprint by 5%. Jack’s solution? Give the job to Kenneth The Page. We also got word that Al Gore will make his second cameo on the show. He almost pulled off a self referential joke a couple years back, let’s see if he can do better this time around.

For the record, 30 Rock is one of the greener shows at NBC Universal. In addition to their standard recycling efforts, the show has removed water bottles and has instead installed water filters. Their caterer also uses compostable products, and the offices have switched to chemical-free cleaning products. They also rent hybrids for both talent and crew. As if I didn’t love 30 Rock enough.

Check out the shows and let us know what you think of their approach to environmentalism. It takes all kinds…

An impressive team of major Hollywood players is behind a new film detailing the birth of the environmental organization Greenpeace. Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure, Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping) will direct, Jerry Zucker (Naked Gun, Airplane!) and wife Janet will produce, and The West Wing’s Andy Sorkin has been approached to write the script.

According to the UK Guardian, the story will be told through the eyes of Greenpeace’s charismatic founders, Bob Hunter and Rex Weyler. “We want to look at these unlikely heroes who became activists in spite of themselves,” Janet Zucker told Variety. “Jon likes to make a big adventure movies. And we’ve found that the best way to reach people’s hearts and minds is through entertainment.”

The title of the flick is yet to be determined, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pulled from one of the two books the movie is being based on; Rex Wyler’s “Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World” and Bob Hunter’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement”

Warriors of the Rainbow anyone?