Sophia Bush: Happy Camper
by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff
Best known for her role as Brooke Davis on “One Tree Hill,” Sophia Bush and co-star Austin Nichols are hard at work off-camera, drawing attention to environmental issues near and dear to their hearts.
I spoke with Sophia during on 100th day since BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploded, creating the worse environmental disaster in U.S. history. The self-described “eco geek” and budding ecoista—she’s a fan of Stella McCartney, Rogan, David Babaii and Alba—was on location in North Carolina, after returning from a recent trip to the Gulf Coast, where she and Austin joined Global Green to investigate the BP oil spill and got a first-hand look at the corporate bureaucracy surrounding the clean up. “[BP] is really perpetuating the image that they’re trying to fix this,” she said. “But really the effort is to cover up how badly they have screwed up the situation.”
Bureaucracy is not a concept Sophia supports—especially when it comes to environmental and social justice. Despite reducing her meat consumption—she’s considering veganism—shifting the “One Tree Hill” set to compostable tableware and encouraging recycling, the star remains frustrated by the production’s inability to donate excess food to a local homeless shelter for liability reasons. “I understand that everyone is scared of…something not working and it coming down on them, but we need to stop being scared and start taking care of people and our environment,” Sophia told me. “Food waste in the U.S. accounts for a crazy amount of greenhouse gas emissions—we throw out 94 billion pounds of food every year! That’s insane.”
As @aus10nichols and @sophiabush, the couple continues to draw attention to the oil spill story. “A woman wrote me from Australia that the only news she was getting on the oil spill was from my Twitter account,” Sophia said, noting the irony: The actress only recently set up her social media accounts—under protest.
“I met a girl who was a fan of the show and she ran up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much it’s so cool that you always respond to me on Twitter.’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t have Facebook, MySpace or friend-whatever.’ And she burst into tears! It ruined her day,” Sophia said. “I almost feel like I have to do the social media stuff now in order to get rid of the people who were impersonating me doing it. Words were misspelled. Honey, I was a journalism major—if you’re going to pretend to be me online at least spell check!”
But she does have limits. “People have said to me, ‘We really appreciate what you’re doing for the environment but can you tweet about other stuff?’ Not really. I really don’t care about what I ate for breakfast,” Sophia said. The focus remains firmly on her cause.
The actress, who grew up in Pasadena, CA, attributes her interest in environmentalism to summers spent at a camp in the Sierras. “We had this phrase, ‘Pack out what you pack in.’ We never left trash or a site disturbed,” she said. “Is it worth a $1,000 fine to throw your soda can into the wilderness? How hard it is to take that plastic bottle home and toss it in the recycling bin?”
And at the end of the day, Sophia believes that environmentalism is simply about making a personal commitment: “Everything starts with one person. Gandhi was one person. Martin Luther King was one person. And look at what they did! They started these amazing social revolutions. We need a social revolution for the environment. I know that we can do it. I know that it’s possible. We just need to get everyone on board and then we’re off to the races.”
But Sophia’s personal commitment goes even further: Her goal is to inspire others as well. “We have the capability to create a revolution, but there are still people out there spewing this bile that being an environmentalist is elitist. How is having a less expensive electricity bill and buying less expensive fuel and lowering your cost of living elitist? That’s crazy talk,” she said. “I love my job and being an actor but it’s not rocket science. The thing I want to do at the end of the day is pack out what I pack in—and then pack out somebody else’s trash.”
EcoStiletto: Tell me about your work with Global Green.
Sophia Bush: I got involved with Global Green a few years ago. I’ve always been very environmentally conscious and tried to be aware of how I could reduce my level of impact. I think Global Green really proves that it’s possible to make a huge difference as a small group—or even as one person. The challenges that we face may seem insurmountable to us on a singular level; it’s organizations like Global Green that remind me that they’re not.
ES: How did the trip to the Gulf come about?
SB: Austin and I were watching everything unfold and just getting angrier and angrier, but feeling completely helpless. We called Matt Peterson [Global Green’s CEO] and said, “Let’s go down there. Let’s bring information to people who aren’t getting it and maybe attract a group of people to pay attention to this who might not be aware of what’s going on.”
Sophia and Austin with Matt Peterson
So the week before, we started Twitter accounts to shed light on what we were doing while we were there. The response has been extraordinary. The most powerful thing for me was hearing from people in other countries who were saying they weren’t getting information from their news. A woman wrote me from Australia that the only news she was getting on the oil spill was from my Twitter account!
And then when I got back I was getting my friends together to show them the photos and give them more information and one of them texted me that she’d heard BP was vacuuming it up so it was all going to be okay.
[BP] is really perpetuating the image that they’re trying to fix this but really the effort is to cover up how badly they have screwed up the situation.
ES: What are your Twitter handles?
SB: I’m @sophiabush and Austin is @aus10nichols, which is spelled that way because someone had already taken his name. And actually the person who spelled my name incorrectly is not me.
ES: That’s so scary!
SB: It actually devastated me—I found that out a few years ago. I met a girl who was a fan of the show and she ran up to me and said, “Thank you so much it’s so cool that you always respond to me on Twitter.” And I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t have Facebook, MySpace or friend-whatever.” And she burst into tears! It ruined her day. I almost feel like I have to do the social media stuff now in order to get rid of the people who were impersonating me doing it. Words were misspelled. Honey, I was a journalism major—if you’re going to pretend to be me online at least spell check!
Recently, Austin and I put up profiles on CrowdRise.com. Ed Norton was one of the people who started it—it’s a social networking site that’s all about raising money for things that are important to you. He raises money for National Landscape Conservation, which is how I know him because I support them as well.
Austin and I are both raising money for the Gulf—he’s also raising money for Surfrider and I’m raising money for the Masai. In 11 days, we’ve raised more than $20,000! It really does show how people can come together to make a difference. It’s a place where you can fight the good fight and still do good things for the world. It’s taking a lot of will power now not to quit my day job and go work for them full time.
Editor’s note: Further research on CrowdRise and their tagline—“If you don’t give back no one will like you.”—had us at hello. One of the great parts is how people have the opportunity to comment on the impact of that the CrowdRise supporters have had on them. Here’s what Asha said on CrowdRise about Sophia: “ive been following your the tweets on the gulf started. your such a role model and people should have some real faith in the future. so many people jus go on and dont care about anything but themselves. be proud at how humble and caring person you are. i hope when i am your age i can make a difference like yours…keep inspiring to change the world.” Sniff. We’ll be writing more about CrowdRise in coming months.
ES: You said that you’ve always been environmentally conscious. How did that come about?
SB: It’s just something that’s always been in my life. It’s the way that I was raised. I was always told by my parents and my camp counselors to leave a place cleaner than I found it. I spent all my summers at this amazing camp in the Sierras and we had this phrase, “Pack out what you pack in.” We never left trash or a site disturbed.
It breaks my heart to see people toss garbage out of their car windows. I think it’s insane. In California you drive up the highway and there are signs everywhere that say it’s a $1,000 fine for littering. Is it worth a $1,000 fine to throw your soda can into the wilderness? How hard it is to take that plastic bottle home and toss it in the recycling bin?
I’ve always recycled and I’ve always been concerned with wildlife and animals. As I kid, I wanted to be a vet, but I would get too hysterical when I saw animals hurt. I’ve rescued animals my whole life—my dogs, my parents’ dogs, they’re not something bought. I was given the gift of a dog from a breeder and it was really hard for me; eventually I placed the dog with some friends. It just wasn’t something I was comfortable with.
ES: Are you vegetarian or vegan?
SB: I don’t know if it’s a blood type thing or what, but if I don’t eat meat for a few days I actually start to get sick. But what I’ve done is decrease the amount of meat that I eat. I read a statistic that if Americans cut their consumption of meat in half—any kind of meat, beef or chicken—we would lower our greenhouse gas emissions by something like 60%. It’s astonishing.
You start to become a little more conscious and realize that you can be healthy and feed your body protein in other ways. I think Paul McCartney’s meat-free Mondays idea is so cool—I try to stick to that. It’s not hard to give it up for a day. I try to be conscious, to cut down on my percentage. I know that it’s the right thing to do.
ES: When you do eat meat, is it organic and free range?
SB: Yes, I only buy free-range and organic eggs and meat. But it’s hard when you’re on a set. The catering budget doesn’t allow for it because you have to feed 200 people every day. But we do shoot for it.
Everybody that I work with understands my commitment to being greener. They even switched over to compostable tableware so we’re really reducing the amount that our show pollutes.
One other thing that I’m working on is composting. People don’t realize how valuable compost is—companies sell it; it’s really worth something! So we’re working on devising a rig for behind our catering truck so that the caterers can compost the food every day.
Food waste in the U.S. accounts for a crazy amount of greenhouse gas emissions—we throw out 94 billion pounds of food every year! That’s insane. We’re not allowed to donate the food to a shelter in town because of liability. Our bureaucracy is standing in the way of helping people.
ES: It seems like that’s true in many industries.
SB: It’s insane. Jimmy Buffett put all of his money into these boats that hover over the water so they can go into the marshes with Gulf cleanup crews and not disrupt the wetlands. But he got blockaded everywhere he went. He had to raise hell, which he could, because he’s Jimmy Buffett. But the fact that he got stopped trying to do something so great? Something is really wrong here.
I understand that everyone is scared of screwing up, something not working and it coming down on them, but we need to stop being scared and start taking care of people and our environment.
ES: You are really passionate about this!
SB: Yes, I’m on fire. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s normal for young people and maybe more so with women. There’s this ridiculous paradox: We’re told that we can be anything, do anything but we still get criticized for being emotional. It’s like that old joke, “What’s the matter with you? Are you on your period?” So we get nervous to stand on the soapbox.
But one day I—pardon my French—just went, “[Expletive] it!” The passion that I have is the best quality about me. I love my job and being an actor but it’s not rocket science. The thing I want to do at the end of the day is pack out what I pack in—and then pack out somebody else’s trash.
People have said to me, “We really appreciate what you’re doing for the environment but can you tweet about other stuff?” Not really. I really don’t care about what I ate for breakfast.
The only person I’m interested in like that is Olivia Wilde because she cooks the most amazing vegan food and tweets about it. I’ve known her for a while and I told her, “The next time I’m in L.A. I want you to take me vegan for a week.” But other than her, I really don’t care about your omelet.
ES: So speaking about frivolous stuff—not exactly an omelet, but what are your favorite green fashion labels?
SB: I’ve been really impressed by the people who are making green chic. People tend to think of eco-fashion as uncomfortable or ugly, but you just have to look at someone like Stella McCartney to see how gorgeous it can be. Rogan did that amazing partnership with Target where everything was eco-conscious. For me, it’s been really fun to watch the people who are doing things that are still considered cool and fashionionable—but are making an impact.
I loved Natalie Portman doing the shoe line made with no animal products. That’s the kind of stuff that’s so exciting. Even Philip Lim did this great green line. I’m hoping to see more people using eco-friendly materials. At this point it’s as beautiful as the other stuff—why use toxic dyes when you can use non-toxic dyes?
ES: How about beauty, what are your favorite eco-beauty lines?
SB: I’m a really big fan of David Babaii hair care products—a portion of the proceeds go to WildAid. He’s not just using all eco-friendly ingredients, he’s also giving back to the environment when he does it.
I’m also a fan of Alba body products. Parabens are not only toxic for the environment, they’re toxic for human beings—they cause cancer. Why would you want to slather them all over yourself in your lotion? And five years later you have breast cancer? That’s insane. Taking care of our bodies and using beauty products should not make us sick.
I love seeing clean beauty products that you can get at the store like Alba. People have this misconception that eco products cost more. And in some cases that’s true. But the more of the eco stuff that we buy, the more companies will stop making the non-eco products altogether and just make the good ones.
I was speaking to the guys over at Audi, they’re doing the most amazing things with TDI technology when you consider that it’s no emissions and gets twice the mileage as a tank of gas, and isn’t using an oversized battery, which we don’t know how to dispose of. I’m not knocking hybrids—I had one. But Austin is getting an electric car and I’m getting a TDI and we’re going to do this comparison for a year.
They did this demo for me at Audi where they closed all the doors and windows and turned on all the TDI cars and we sat there for half an hour with all the cars running. There’s no gas smog coming out of these cars! They’re fast and fun and amazing—you can get diesel at the regular pump and your car will run twice as long on the same amount of fuel. This is my eco geek and car geek fantasy all rolled into one!
We have the capability to create a revolution, but there are still people out there spewing this bile that being an environmentalist is elitist. How is having a less expensive electricity bill and buying less expensive fuel and lowering your cost of living elitist? That’s crazy talk.
ES: So, with that in mind, what’s the biggest green change you’d like to make in your life—even if it’s impossible right now?
SB: I’d like to have my house completely off the grid. So far, I replaced my water heaters with tank less, which was a huge energy savings. I had the city take away one of our garbage cans and bring over another recycling bin—I didn’t have enough room with one bin. We also compost—I have the bin in the back yard [but] you can get small tumblers—you can even compost in New York if you want to!
Eventually I want to have solar panels and I have a nice big roof so hopefully I can put the neighbors on either side of me on my solar too and get a couple more houses off the grid.
ES: What’s your favorite eco-friendly tip our readers should know about?
SB: Stop using frivolous plastic. I keep bags in the back of my car that I take to the grocery store; if I’m in somebody else’s car I get paper bags and reuse them in my garbage can to put them to some use.
Bottled water is less regulated than the public water system; people have this misconception that it’s better for you, but it’s not. Why spend money on water when you can get cleaner water out of the tap for free? Get a filter, grab a metal bottle—Global Green has great ones, and then you’re supporting a good cause—and then you’re buying one bottle instead of one every day. You’ll be amazed at how much water you save.
ES: Who’s your eco-idol and why?
SB: Matt Peterson is really one of my green heroes. Everything he does with Global Green—they’ve been working to rebuild green since after Katrina and now they’re working with wetlands organizations, not the fake ones that made the PSA funded by the oil industry—is really at the forefront, letting people know that we can do this, we can make this change. We don’t have options any more. We have to change our energy sources and the way our energy is being used.
I’m also very indebted—not personally—to Leonardo di Caprio. Someone with his astonishing level of fame who really pushes to highlight green issues—I’m so grateful that he cares because he could just hole up in a mansion somewhere. He’s a person who has turned a lot of people on to why green is important and why green is sexy!
ES: Absolutely. So what’s your worst eco-sin?
SB: I would say the amount that I have to fly. It’s hard. I work on location. I have to fly to do anything in my life. To go home, to see my family, to do press for the show. My whole life revolves around traveling on airplanes and they’re incredibly polluting. But the big solar plane just made it through a whole night flight—that’s great to know where our future is heading.
ES: What’s the best green advice you ever received—and who gave it to you?
SB: I think the best advice I’ve gotten wasn’t from any one person in particular, but my whole childhood lead to me being passionate and knowing that green is the way to go.
Start small. Look at your life and look at the ways that you can change your impact and start there. If you change the way that you impact the Earth, eventually you can [influence] your friends and their friends. It’s a ripple effect. And suddenly there are a whole bunch of people doing good for the world.
Everything starts with one person. Gandhi was one person. Martin Luther King was one person. And look at what they did! They started these amazing social revolutions. We need a social revolution for the environment. I know that we can do it. I know that it’s possible. We just need to get everyone on board and then we’re off to the races.
Photo credit Global Green red carpet image WireImage/Jeff Vespa; all other photos Global Green
