Long before Julia Louis-Dreyfus became internationally famous for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, the actress made a commitment to sustainability along with her husband and fellow SNL alum Brad Hall. Louis-Dreyfus lives in a green home and is actively involved a long list of environmental organizations including Heal the Bay, Trust for Public Land, the Environmental Media Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
While her husband grew up in hippiefied 1970s Santa Barbara, where an oil spill spurred community-wide environmental activism, Louis-Dreyfus told Grist that she never had any one defining experience that turned her on to being green.
I grew up spending a lot of time in Wyoming, hiking and so forth, so I certainly had an early appreciation for the natural world. I also spent years as a kid traveling in the developing worlds. We lived in Sri Lanka for a year, Colombia, Tunisia, where my stepfather was working as a doctor with Project Hope. I was made aware of the idea of being a part of something bigger than you, something bigger than our lives. That impulse is definitely what now drives my environmental work. It’s certainly part of what compelled me to want to live efficiently and build this house — to support solutions to problems that reach well beyond my lifetime.
The expansion of her family was another big motivation. Louis-Dreyfus wanted to make sure that her sons would inherit a healthy world, and in fact, it was the inability to take her firstborn swimming due to toxic waste in the bay near her home that led to her activism with Santa Monica organization Heal the Bay. She’s now a board member.
She also spoke to Grist about the greening of her home, and why she believes that the little things we do to green up our daily lives are so important:
This is a really scary time right now. The war and terrorism in the Middle East, the crisis of leadership in many of these oil-supply countries in the developing world, the crisis of global warming — all these are very clearly tied to energy. I mean, what the hell is going on? Why isn’t our leadership connecting the dots? What’s so frightening about these issues is feeling like you don’t have any control over them. So for me, these lifestyle decisions are a way of having control and feeling less guilty. I walk around feeling a sort of existential guilt all the time; for me this house is a way of feeling less guilty about the universe.
Louis-Dreyfus offered her earnest tips for greener living during an appearance on The Tonight Show in 2008:
The actress has even managed to squeeze some eco-values into her current starring vehicle, The New Adventures of Old Christine. Her character drives a Prius and if you look carefully, you can make out all-natural cleaning products perched on the countertop of the set’s kitchen. They’re small things, but Louis-Dreyfus and her husband believe that making such things everyday sights on television can help Americans accept the concept of sustainability into their own lives.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Green Score: 22,600
Photo credit: Heal the Bay
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The article Who’s Who in Green: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is syndicated for use on EcoFunctional. The original content in it’s entirety can be found here.
