Renewable Resources: The Second Season of HGTV's Living with Ed
by Joy Zaccaria

THE PILOT

It all started with a 10-minute pilot we decided to put together for the network. We shot in February of 2006 at the Begley’s home in the Los Angeles area. 

As a crew we weren’t sure what to expect when we arrived for the first shoot day.  All of us knew who Ed Begley, Jr. was, but we weren’t sure if we were going to be ejected from the house for wearing leather shoes or if we would be force fed granola and rosehip water. 

We soon found out Ed is one of the most non-judgmental people you will ever meet. He welcomed our questions and kindly accepted us into his home like we were part of his close knit circle for years. 

The first day we took a tour of the home with Ed and Rachelle Carson Begley, his equally remarkable wife. They took us through the front yard where Ed houses his own drought tolerant plants, some of which are edible. He also took us through his amazingly normal home where he showed us all the modifications he has made over time to run a greener life or “Ship” as Ed’s refers to it.

Ed and Rachelle’s whole living experience is completely off the “grid”. By “grid” I mean the Local Power Company that the rest of us pay $30-$190/ month to for lights, heat and general electricity. None of us in the crew had really thought seriously about getting electricity any other way then by plugging into the wall and paying a bill monthly. 

As Ed showed us around, we all felt like a brand new door had opened to a place that we had heard about, but never really thought was possible in everyday life.That’s the thing with Ed.  He does the following four things that lure you in and we can all learn from:

We all left the first day of shooting with a refreshed view on the environment and a new sense of living.

Recycling

The first thing we all thought of was recycling. We ordered a new recycling bin at our production offices. Once we told everyone on staff that we had a new recycling pickup, the results were astounding. The bin filled up with cardboard boxes and paper in less then a day. We then had to call the city of Burbank and jump through hoops to get a huge recycling dumpster. 

We were all embarrassed that we hadn’t done something like this before. We went through tons of paper, cans of soda and cardboard boxes everyday for the last few years and never recycled one piece. That’s sad, but look at Ed saving people one office at a time.

Note:  We only buy drinks in cans or bottles on set and Ed recycles them all for us.  This also goes for the paper we use while at Ed and Rachelle’s…and the coffee we get in the mornings.  All recycled.

We also found a place called greendisk.com where you can recycle DVD’s and CD’s after use.  We haven’t used it yet, but intend to.

Printing

Production requires a lot of paperwork. Releases, scripts, emails, binders, music cue sheets, edit decision lists, etc. It goes on and on and most of the reports are in the 100’s of pages. We decided to make a conscious effort to only print things as needed. If it can stay on your computer, it should. If you can scan it and email it instead of making multiple copies, than you should. We also purchased recycled paper instead of new paper.

Note:  When you are done with toner cartridges you can recycle them.  There are a lot of charities that take them or you can look on the vendor websites for return slips, which is what we chose to do.

Bulk

As I mentioned before, craft services in production are quite lavish on some sets. We have always had smaller craft services at BCII, but we needed to do a better job for this show and future shows alike. We decided to buy things in bulk where possible. No more individual bags of chips, candy and other wasteful wrapping paper. 

If we were going to snack on nuts, then we could all take if from the same big jar and not individual packets.  Once you start to think about the waste of buying individually, it is pretty easy to move towards bigger containers and refilling snacks instead of throwing away a wrapper every time you snack.

Car Pooling and Hybrids

To date we haven’t done a lot of traveling on Living with Ed. Most of the shooting we do is at their home, so thankfully we aren’t required to use a lot of gas. On our first two days we did about 80 miles of driving, used Hybrid vehicles for our travels.

Ed and Rachelle are kind enough to always drive their electric car when we need to travel around town as a team. When we can’t all fit in their electric car, we carpool as a crew. There is no reason for all of us to drive separately. 

Note:  Ed either rides his bike or drives his electric vehicle. I have never seen him in a gasoline car. Not even our crew carpool. We hope to soon have a full time Hybrid or electric car so we work just like him.

Charging

There is a simple rule every one of us has naturally adopted on set. If you aren’t using it, turn it off and/or unplug it.   We all realize that when we are charging our camera’s, batteries and other equipment at the Begley’s home we are being fully charged by solar grids. This does not give us an excuse to waste electricity. Even if the energy is clean, we need not waste.

Note:  Every time we plug it at the Begley’s we are off the grid, but some of us have solar backpacks that charge our cell phones and computers just to get us in the habit of using solar when we are not on set.

Lights, Camera, Action….

We decided to use fluorescents on set instead of incandescnets and for good reason. They cast a beautifully diffused soft light, use less power than incandescents , and run cool. No more furnace-like atmosphere that requires loads of cooling and sweaty foreheads.

As far as cameras go, we have to use a certain level of camera to shoot the show. There isn’t a lot of play in this area. We are already charging the camera’s batteries on solar, but we decided we would try and use the tapestock till its end to reduce tape usage. Our editors didn’t think to highly of this, so we are still looking for other ways to become more green in this area.

As far as the still camera’s we use, we only use digital. This way we do not waste paper, or film processing chemicals. We find that only about 2% of the pictures we ever take are used outside of our group and most are for online consumption. 

We all think of new things everyday and continue to grow as we shoot the show.  If you have suggestions, please let us know by emailing us a LivingWithEd@sbcglobal.net.