The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.

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This US News headline – ‘Is MTV Being Hypocritical?’ — may seem a little obvious. But, this time, the mixed messages aren’t about body image issues or consumerism. The hypocrisy is about the environment.

At the same time that people are praising the channel for bashing green-washing with their Switch campaign, the crews of MTV are taking part in some green-washing of their own. Hmm, hypocrisy about hypocrisy?

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The television show, which premieres on September 17^th, took over the neighboring, inhabited island in militant style by hiring the local police to prevent residents from accessing a public beach. As it turned out, according to local witnesses, MTV had cleared a small patch of rainforest to build a tiki-hut structure near the beach, developed an access road through the forest, and installed generators and lighting on the beach.

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The launch includes not only TV ads, but also a series of five short films. With the short films, the network will expose greenwashing to half a billion MTV viewers from around the world. The short films urge corporations and young people to move towards a greener lifestyle.

One TV ad, created by ad agency 180 Amsterdam, features an animated character singing a “green song”.

“The MTV Green Song simply asks you to do your bit for the environment by switching off your lights, computers and TV sets,” said the 180 Amsterdam creative director, Sean Thompson.

The short film series will appear on Switch’s sister site Element. It will be pioneered by five young innovators seeking to fight the climate crisis with their videos.

“In Element, we’ve worked to confront both the skeptics who think that climate change is just too big to tackle — and those who hope that just changing their light bulbs is enough,” said Mark Harvey, Internews Europe’s Head of Development, who with Emily McDowell is the co-founder and co-producer of Element. He added, “Our five characters are from a new generation of climate activists who will connect with young people looking for those who embody lifestyle change, rather than preach about it.”

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Image source MTV Switch

MTV

What’s this got to do with the environment? Well, MTV is claiming that this season will have a green slant. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the show, The Real World films seven strangers who "live together and have their lives taped" in cities in the U.S. and around the globe. The Real World: Hollywood has already been cast, will start filming this fall, and will air sometime after the New Year.

The newest Real World house (which are, as a rule, large and lavish) is going to be built using eco-friendly building principles. According to a press release issued by MTV, "The Real World house will include everything from solar energy solutions to bamboo flooring, recycled glass counters, some sustainable furniture and recycled vintage decor, Energy Star appliances, a solar heated swimming pool and energy efficient lighting." Bunim-Murray Productions, the longtime producer of the series, claims that it is trying to green up its production practices through energy-efficiency and carbon offsetting. In addition, eco-friendly products and practices will be promoted throughout the series, so viewers can be introduced to a greener way of life along with the cast members, and MTV will showcase things viewers can do to lessen their environmental footprint. There was no word whether or not MTV plans on replacing the typical house SUVs with hybrids, flex-fuel, or biodiesel vehicles, nor whether the job assigned to the casts will have an environmental focus.

I’m a big fan of reality television (don’t judge!), but The Real World lost its luster right around the Las Vegas season, when the focus shifted from documenting the lives of dynamic young people, to a MTV-sponsored booze and sexfest for pretty twentysomethings who aspire to…film more reality television. Will this Real World house really be green, or is this a case of greenwashing? I can’t imagine the typical Real World castmember of the past seven or eight years getting stoked about sustainability, in between dancing on bars, hooking up, and avoiding actual real jobs. But maybe, just maybe, the visibility of green practices, however small they may be, just might raise some consciousness among the MTV set. However, the possible juxtaposition of a green Real World with that tribute-to-all-excesses My Super Sweet Sixteen might just be too ironic for me. Will the "Green World" be as green as The Real World is real?

MTV has been trying to change that. With a year long campaign launched last Earth Day called Break The Addiction, MTV set out to educate their viewers about environmental issues and empower them to create change. I recently talked with Ian Rowe, Vice President of Public Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at MTV, about their campaign, youth involvement in the environment and the special green edition of MTV's car makeover show, Pimp My Ride.

Green Options: How did the Break the Addiction campaign begin?

Ian Rowe: A year ago, April 22, 2006, we launched our Break the Addiction campaign to educate our audience about the issues related to global warming and to make it relevant to their daily lives. For most of our audience when they had historically heard about global warming it was in the context of polar bears suffering because of melting ice, which is a terrible thing but on a day to day basis young people weren't really seeing how it connected to their day to day life.

So we saw an opportunity to really help educate our audience about these issues, show how they're all connected and that daily behaviors could have an impact on all of these things. In the Break the Addiction campaign we present a new daily tip on air, online, and on wireless devices of a simple thing that every young person can do that will improve their life and then simultaneously, positively impact the environment.

GO: What has the response been regarding the campaign?

IR: Historically, the environment has not really rated that high with our audience. It was one of the reasons we actually wanted to launch the campaign because we knew global warming, issues of energy independence, and climate change were going to be big items on the agenda. After we launched the campaign we decided to do a major survey to see what the impact had been.

While Al Gore's efforts have definitely helped shape public opinion, when we did our poll in June of last year, for the first time ever young people rated the environment as the number one issue that their generation will face. Eight in ten said that the time to act on global warming is right now. We had never seen numbers like that at all. That's important for us because before we ever see major changes in behavior we first have to start seeing major changes in attitude. So that was great evidence for us that there has been a very good response.

GO: The Break the Addiction Campaign only lasts for one year though. What happens after Earth Day 2007?

IR: There's no question that we'll continue especially given the level of importance that climate change, global warming, energy independence have now taken on and certainly will through the presidential election. So we will continue to look for ways that MTV can engage our audience around this issue.

GO: How does Pimp My Ride fit in to all of this?

IR: As part of the campaign we wanted to use our biggest platform to reinforce that message and certainly Pimp My Ride is one of those. We had a young person who was willing to have their '65 Chevy Impala car pimped out. We put a 800-horsepower engine in it, converted it to biodiesel, put it on a race track against a performance sports car. We beat that car, which just shows that you don't have to sacrifice performance at all in order to be eco-friendly.

GO: How did the Governator get involved?

IR: We've worked with Governor Schwarzenegger before. Since we launched Break the Addiction we've been trying to find ways to work together, especially knowing his leadership in bringing California to address these issues. Once we were doing this Pimp My Ride in California it made sense to approach the governors office and it worked out really well.

GO: Is this the only green Pimp My Ride so far?

IR: It is, although we are looking for ways, not only in Pimp My Ride, but in other shows too where we can also incorporate a green message.

GO: It sounds like MTV is really trying to engage its audience - and it seems to be working.

IR: We are heartened by young people's response. The issues resonate with them because we're talking about how these issues can be addressed in a very pragmatic way every single day. And I think it's a hallmark of how we typically engage young people. We speak in a language that resonates with them around issues that they say they care about.

The special Pimp My Ride episode airs Sunday, April 22 at 1p ET, plus special green episodes of TRL (featuring Break the Addiction Challenge winners) and MTV News (with an interview with Gov Schwartzenegger) will air on Monday, April 23.
For more information about MTV's break the addiction campaign check out think.MTV.com.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a special appearance in the episode and gives his approval for the pimped out, alternative fuel powered ride. The Pimp My Ride crew also takes a side-trip to Imperium Renewables to learn how alternative fuels are made, and they test the power of the biodiesel Impala against a Lamborhini Gallardo.

This episode not only features how green G.A.S is (and has been since they started converting vehicles to use alternative fuels in the late 1970's) but also shows that you can have a powerful car and be eco-minded at the same time.

This green episode (to air April 22 at 1p ET) will wrap up thinkMTV's year long, 12-step "Break the Addiction" campaign, which was started Earth Day 2006 to empower young people to get involved in efforts to curb climate change. thinkMTV is MTV's platform to engage their viewers in action on a range of global issues through documentaries, interactive online media, and partnerships with outside organizations.

MTV has gotten a lot of youth engaged in activities related to thinkMTV, including introducing the "alternative spring break", where instead of partying students spend their spring breaks helping others. Since the climate crisis is far from over I hope MTV's push at involving their audience in action doesn't end with the finish of their campaign.

Via PRNewswire; MTV