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Rebecca Carter

Green Gossip

Celebs helping the planet (and occasionally not) are the buzzworthy subjects of this Miami-based editor’s year-old eco-gossip site ecorazzi.com. Here she dishes some good dirt. —James Servin

How did ecorazzi come into being?

It's like paparazzi, and [co-editor] Michael d’Estries came up with the name. We started ecorazzi a year ago. I have a blog called greenermiami.com and Michael recruited me to write for his blog, groovygreen.com. One day last June he sent me an IM that said 'Hey, I was thinking about starting a blog based on celebrities and the environment.' I said: 'That’s a good idea. Let’s do it.' By August we started posting. I think it's a guilty pleasure for environmentalists. And people looking for information about their favorite celebrities are maybe going to learn something about the environment that they didn't know before.

Were you a big reader of the tabloids?

In the past, I never followed celebrity gossip all that much. But one day I was watching a television special called It's Good To Be Leonardo DiCaprio. It mentioned that he's been into the eco movement for a long time, and that he's been buying up forests to save them. This was a turning point for me because I had been into the environment in college but had kind of lost my way. The show on Leo inspired me to get back into the green movement. That's the power of a celebrity in the spotlight—a topic that the regular news might find boring suddenly becomes interesting.

Who are your favorite celebrities?

Everybody loves Leo. Julia Roberts is on the board of Earth Biofuels. Adrian Grenier has been behind a lot of green initiatives lately. He's redone his home in Brooklyn and made it totally eco. He's not hard on the eyes, either. We always follow Clooney—he tends to do a lot of stuff on the humanitarian front, which we also cover.

Any issue that's excited you lately?

This is not a really positive one. I saw a video with Paris Hilton in it, and I just couldn't get over her being on the green carpet and saying, 'You know, because we need to, you know, save the earth from, you know, all this pollution, and, I don't know…' I was just rolling all day long. There's been a lot of talk lately about cynics and hypocrites, and I think it's a really interesting conversation: are we all hypocrites, including the celebrities who do some things green and then others not at all? For those of us who are trying to live green, it's extremely difficult to transfer what's ideal and bring it into reality.

Which celebs does ecorazzi take to task most often? By clicking on the 'not green' category on your website, I found a few citations, including one for the Spice Girls for generating 9,500 tons of carbon dioxide for private jet flights on their upcoming tour. There was also your item about Paris Hilton being escorted to jail by the police, with a caption that says, 'She shows her green side by carpooling.' That was a little snarky.

Yeah. We probably take too many liberties with poor Paris. There's so much media around her that it's hard to stay away. I have this thing with Kate Bosworth. When we started the blog, one of the first things that came out was that she was at Global Cool promoting this environmental cause, and she's throwing cigarette butts on the ground—it was a gossip item, there's no way to confirm anything like that. I see Kate at all these events to fight poverty and I see her showing up at Leo's premieres, but I haven't seen her necessarily do anything.

Is there ever a tipping point with items you get, where an item you get might be too slanderous?

You have to walk a line. There have been a couple of times where something has slipped out that probably wasn't completely appropriate. Readers come right back at us and say that they don't expect that from us.

Do you fact check?

Are we acting like real journalists? It depends. When you first start out as a blogger, you don't have a journalism background, you're just compiling information and writing. The more popular you get, the bigger your get, you begin to follow the actual process that a journalist would follow: you're on the press list, you're getting press passes to go to events. As time goes on, you just have to get more professional. Now that we have access to the sources, it's a different situation. We try and be responsible with the information that we're giving out.

Reader comments on your site are usually so nice. Like when Mia Farrow offered to put herself in jail in Sudan so that a prisoner with a medical condition could be released, the reader response was 'What a great person,' whereas on Perez Hilton there would be comments like 'Is she crazy?'

Yeah, and—'Her shirt is ugly.' On the Internet, people feel that they can say things that they never would to your face. I think a lot of our readers are good people who are trying to do good things, and they support a lot of the things we support as well.

What does 'green' mean to you?

My tagline on my blog 'Greener Miami' is: 'Every little bit counts,' and that's what I live by. Do what you can. Little tiny sacrifices, I think, make a difference.

You talked earlier about being green in college, and then losing your way. What happened?

I moved in with a girl who led a very disposable lifestyle. It seemed so easy. I was struck by the convenience, and for a while I was convinced to go to the other side.

What small sacrifices do you make now?

I bring my own bags to the grocery store. It's a pain in the butt. You have to help the bagger, hold the bags open and instruct them that it's okay, they can keep filling it in, and No, you don't want them to put it in a plastic bag and then in your bag. It can be a long process, it slows up the line, and it makes me almost embarrassed because it becomes this big production. So it's this thing that I like to do, but also dread.

What are some things you'd recommend to people who would like to do their part but don't know where to begin?

Get involved in your local community. Think Globally, Act Globally is absolutely true. The way that we're going to impact things is through our own communities. So find locally-based organizations like the Sierra Club, or Green Drinks. Also, get rid of junk mail. I haven't used this service, but greendimes.com will charge you $15 to do it for you, and plant ten trees in your name. You could get rid of the junk mail yourself, and I've written several pieces online explaining the process. (Here's the link:
http://greenoptions.com/2007/01/15/tip_o_the_day_please_mister_postman_no_more_junk_mail)

Have you ever experienced an eco-conflict?

Lately I've been trying to assess the whole organic T-shirt thing. Locally, there's U.S. organic cotton, and it's always going to be the same natural color. There are companies abroad producing organic T-shirts with dyes that are carbon-based. If you had to choose between an organic shirt that was made in China and a conventional shirt, also made in China, does that make the organic shirt okay? It gets really sticky.

What's your eco-sin?

I have a 50-inch plasma TV. I wished for it with much guilt. My husband and I are real couch potatoes. We love HDTV, we love the movies. This is our big indulgence. We thought about it for several years before taking the plunge.

Are you and your husband both green?

What's important to me is that the person is a good person. He supports everything I do, and he's just been incredible this whole way, but I wouldn't say that he's as obsessive about it as I am. He hates it when I clean with vinegar.

Now that you're in the gossip business, what tabloids do you read?

I don't get magazines, buy them or read them. First of all, in the web world, the information in magazines is just way too old. There are some incredible statistics about how many of the magazines on the newsstand actually sell—I think it's a quarter of the magazines on the newsstand, and the rest of it is garbage. Maybe they get recycled, but I think we are beginning to understand that recycling isn't the answer. The ink is probably toxic and it takes a lot of water to recycle.

Do you feel a little more high-brow because your gossip is green? I see that the tagline on ecorazzi.com is 'guilt-free celebrity gossip.'

Do we think we're better than the rest? No, just different. People who get their kicks from reading regular gossip rags aren't going to be completely satisfied with us, because we've got a different tone. We're a new genre.