Our video was a spin off of the Ashton Kutcher show, Punk'D. We wanted to show the effects of greenwashing, and how people are so eager to believe what they are told without questioning the facts that obviously do not line up.
This video is a brief display of a group of friends subject to Greenwashing. They have been persuaded by the use of advertising phrases such as "all natural" and "local" to believe that what they are eating is really beneficial to the environment. They meet for dinner, and discuss how they feel that they are strongly benefiting the environment with "local" corn from California (video shot in Burlington, VT) and "natural" pizza from the pizza place down the street.
In the making of this film, we first had to come up with a plan of action, and a theme to focus on. Given a minute to present this information, we had a lot of trouble narrowing down our many enthusiastic ideas. We decided on the topic of greenwashing, because it is something of concern for all of us, and something we thought we could visually display, with paint and food as props.
Minor problems that came up were budget issues and the mess that we saw coming with the paint, but neither of those came to be big problems in the end, because the paint was divided among the group, at a low cost to each of us, and the mess was minimal. We were able to mix the paint with water so it went further and we used less of it.
Gathering all of our ideas together was a lot of fun, because we got to see what each member of the group was passionate about, and where everyone held strength. Eric was helpful as the camera man and editor, Leslie was a wonderful onion chopper and host for our feast, Amanda worked with the paint and added humor to the conversation, and Diana was the bearer of awareness. She was the greenwasher who made us realize we had all made a big mistake in believing the propaganda.
This was a fun activity; unfortunately my green thumb is gone, but the memory will remain.
I hope you learned something, and don't fall victim to being WASH'D. Watch out for the dinner gremlins who wear pillowcase capes...they could be lurking under your table.
