May 16th, 2008 · No Comments

• LEONARDO DiCAPRIO

Before he became the mega-star that he is, the eternally youthful Leonardo was known to think outside the box, particularly when it came to the environment. Now he has a well-established and funded organization to help his multiple causes: The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation , founded in 1998, which has worked in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Global Green USA, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (he is on the IFAW’s Honorary Board of Directors) and others.

Photo: leonardodicaprio.com

Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2007 documentary ‘The 11th Hour’ focuses on the impact of human carelessness on the environment.

One of the foundation’s priorities right now is to support global efforts to stop the use of plastic bags in grocery stores and shops. The campaign has top visibility on the DiCaprio Foundation website, which sounds the alarm about plastics reaching critical mass.

“Our planet is choking on plastic, and plastic bags are a huge part of the problem,” the site explains. “Shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to 1 TRILLION plastic bags per year. This translates to about 1 million bags every minute across the globe, or 150 bags a year for every person on earth.”

The site entreats readers to sign an online pledge to go plastic free.
Also on the DiCaprio agenda is a “stop junk mail” campaign, aimed at stopping the paper waste responsible for the destruction of endangered forests, which contributes to global warming.

“In 2003, Congress created the national Do Not Call Registry… Today we need a comparable registry to end the onslaught of junk mail,” the site exhorts.

But the best known “outreach” program is probably DiCaprio’s 2007 documentary entitled, The 11th Hour, which is narrated and produced by the actor/activist and focuses on the long-time-coming impact of human carelessness on the earth’s environment. It’s heady and frightening stuff, but the New York Times has called “essential viewing,” and the subtitle sounds a hopeful note: “Turn Mankind’s Darkest Hour into its Finest.”

Speaking to the UK’s “Birmingham Post” earlier this spring, the 33-year-old Oscar-winning actor defended the film against any potential charges that he has commandeered the green-wagon to boost his own image or career.
“This documentary is something that I have been trying to do for many years. Ever since I started environmental work, I’ve wanted to do a documentary that really encompasses every major environmental issue in the world and speaks to all the greatest experts.” (Those range from physicist Stephen Hawking to former Soviet president Mikhael Gorbachev.)

Also, he adds, “I was tired of watching news programmes and listening to environmentalists or scientists that have devoted their lives to an issue like global warming, having to sit there and get wrangled into some sort of argument about whether this is really happening or not. …We wanted to make a home-made movie where we got the greatest minds possible all speaking uninterrupted without any corporate backing or studio involvement from the onset.”

DiCaprio also lauded other documentary efforts aimed at social change, such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth for explaining the science of global warming and its impact on a global scale.

“…All this inevitably boils to a publicity game for the planet and what’s good for the place we live in.”

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