Living Like Ed
Authors: Jr. Ed Begley
LIVING LIKE
ED
To my family—my wife, Rachelle, my son, Nicholas, and my daughters, Amanda and Hayden—and to Bruno Kirby and Ingrid Begley
FOREWORD
BY RACHELLE CARSON-BEGLEY
Years ago, I came to Hollywood to follow my dreams, fall in love, become an actress, and live like a queen.
Well, I am an actress and I did fall in love with my prince, Ed Begley, Jr. And now we’re married and I’m living like . . . well, what exactly am I living like? Certainly not the Hollywood royalty of my fantasies.
Yes, my husband’s a star, but he’s decided we won’t live in Beverly Hills. Instead we have a charming little house in Studio City, complete with a white picket fence made entirely of recycled plastic milk jugs. We have a fleet of sporty vehicles: his electric car, my hybrid, and our bicycles.
All of the power for our house is produced on-site. Solar panels pretty much cover the roof, and we have our very own wind turbine.
It’s not quite the palace I imagined as a girl growing up in Atlanta. But let’s face it: I married into a lifestyle.
I like to joke that before I met Ed, I drove a Hummer, but the truth is I’ve always been interested in the environment. My dad had a little farm, and we always had fresh fruit and vegetables. As a child, I would scream “Polluters!” out of the car window at big trucks. And I do remember that when the Chattahoochee River turned blue, and it was not a blue you’d see in nature, I thought, “This is not right.”
So I always had a degree of environmental awareness.
On the other hand, I like fashion. I like nice cars and beautiful homes. I like good food. And while I had always appreciated other people’s dedication to environmental causes, it wasn’t my big thing. I just didn’t have a lot of patience for people who had holier-than-thou attitudes about saving the planet. So when Ed and I started going out, I liked to be sort of provocative with Hollywood types who made a big deal of their environmentalism. On our second or third date, a double date with Don Henley and his now wife, I said something like, “So what’s the deal with the environment? There are so many other issues out there. There are children’s issues. There are women’s issues. There are people dying all over the planet. It seems pretty easy to be into the environment. It’s sort of a safe cause.”
And Don said, “Without the environment, we’d be without the basic human rights of clean air and fresh water.” He made a good point.
But it wasn’t until Ed and I really got serious that my lifestyle began to change in a big way.
That’s not to say it’s been an easy transition. Where Ed sees only the environment—and the financial savings—I can see the other side. I care about the environment, I really do, but I also care about aesthetics. I help our family find some sort of balance.
In this book, I speak for the “average guy,” the one who can’t always remember which kind of plastic can go into the recycling bin—or who can’t understand why a rain barrel has to be big and orange and ugly. Surely there must be an attractive rain barrel out there someplace! Just as, surely, there must be organic clothing that’s flattering and stylish and comfortable, too.
One thing I’ve gotta admit: You can’t accuse Ed of “going green” to be chic or because everyone else around him is doing it. He doesn’t go whichever way the wind blows. He’s not a faddist. He doesn’t follow the trends.
In 1990 it wasn’t trendy to ride a bike for any other purpose than to get fit. No one did it to preserve the environment—or to stay out of a gasoline-powered car—unless they were a granola-head in Humboldt County. In fact, eco-consciousness was so far under the radar at that time that Ed’s environmental efforts were seen as weird. As his wife, it’s been hard to stand by and watch people treat Ed like some kind of green freak.
I think it even cost Ed a little bit in his career. His actions made some people feel uncomfortable or like he was judging them. He’s never been one to judge; he just did what heroes do: He made a sacrifice for something bigger than himself.
But now the attitudes are shifting. There are lots of like-minded people in Hollywood who think, “I like Ed’s commitment to the environment; he’s really a good guy. Wouldn’t it be funny to cast him as the masked murderer in this show?”
That’s the great thing about “hard work finally meets opportunity”—now everyone’s eager to hear what he has to say because it’s become more chic, but he’s just saying what he believes and has believed in for more than three decades. And at least no one’s making fun of him anymore!
I’m glad to see that the focus on the environment has grown to include my biggest causes, too: women’s and children’s health. The health of the environment obviously affects every one of us every single day. What do we feed our children and ourselves? What do we wear? What do we breathe? Is there poison in the air? On our skin? In our food? I know I take it personally, and I hope you will, too. After all, if I can learn to accept and live with and even embrace the lifestyle changes that living with Ed have brought into my world, I bet you can start living like Ed, too. And we’ll all be just a little bit better for it.
INTRODUCTION
A big environmental bandwagon has been rolling through town lately, and a lot of folks inside and outside of Hollywood have hopped on. And I couldn’t be happier! Though sadly it’s taken some pretty dire environmental predictions to focus everyone’s attention on the harm we are doing to the planet, I believe the message is finally being heard and that more people every day are looking around to see what they can do to live in a more eco-friendly, responsible way. Fortunately, there’s a lot that every single one of us can do. In a nutshell,
I believe we need to live simply so that others can simply live.
And I’m here to show you how.
People who know me as an actor may not realize that I’ve got another passion that’s at least as important to me: the environment. Sometimes, when people see me at a grocery store or at a farmers’ market selling my Begley’s Best nontoxic cleaning supplies, they’re kind of baffled, wondering if I’ve fallen on hard times. It’s surely a surprise, after seeing me on TV or in movies, to find me standing there hawking cleaning products.
Actually, I still work quite regularly as an actor. But I also make time to sell these nontoxic cleaning supplies—and I put my name on them—because I really believe in them. And if you’ve ever seen my television show,
Living with Ed,
about how my wife, Rachelle, and our daughter, Hayden, and I live, you know my commitment to living simply, cleanly, and efficiently doesn’t stop there.
I got involved with the environment in 1970, the year the first Earth Day was held. I started recycling, composting, and buying biodegradable soaps and detergents, and I bought my first electric car.
In 1990 I bought a little house that had been built in 1936, long before the phrase
energy efficiency
was common parlance. I thought, “I’ve been a quote/unquote environmentalist for twenty years now. It’s time for me to go a little further.” I had a book,
50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth.
I thought, “Let me try all fifty,” figuring maybe half of them would work.
Well, guess what? They
all
worked. Every last one. Some of the results were subtle, but most were not. I saved energy, and I saved dollars.
It’s been nearly forty years since I took those first small steps. And now I’m ready to share what I’ve learned with you. I’ll start with some of the easy things you can do in your home. Some of these changes are simple. They just require you to establish a new habit. Others involve making a purchase, such as drapes or even a new dishwasher. You may want to make a few of the changes or, like I did, try to implement them all. Either way, I promise you the results will be concrete and they will be worth the effort, both to the environment and to your bottom line. And if that’s the case, where is the down-side, right?
Since I first started down this path, I’ve made
many
changes in my life. Actually, I’ve used myself as a guinea pig a lot of the time. I’ve tried things like producing solar electricity for my home, driving an electric car, and cooking in a solar oven. I’ve found ways to reduce the amount of trash I produce, ways to reduce the amount of electricity and water that I use, and ways to grow my own food.
This book is designed to help you learn from my experience. After thirty-eight years of doing this, I know what works. I know what saves energy, what saves water—and what saves money! So maybe you can use my life as an example of one way to take this journey.
Of course I don’t expect you to make
all
these changes right off the bat. It’s really a process. I’ve gone pretty far with this stuff, but you might want to start out small. Either way, I’ll show you a lot of things you can do, from changing the kind of lightbulbs you buy or shopping for organic produce at your local farmers’ market to purchasing a new appliance or vehicle.
The simple fact is, you don’t climb Mount Everest in a single day. First you climb up to base camp. Then you stop there and you get acclimated for a while. After you’ve adjusted to the altitude,
then
you take the next step and climb a little higher. And then you stop again and get acclimated. And you only climb as high as you are able at each stage.
Becoming environmentally aware—and adjusting your lifestyle to reflect your beliefs and your values—is the same kind of process. You take a small step and you prove to yourself that you can do it. You compare your electric bills and you see that the change you made was good for your wallet. You see how much money you saved and you see how little it affected the quality of your life. In fact, I’ll bet you barely even notice the difference.
When you feel more confident and more comfortable—better acclimated, if you will—you make one or two more changes, and so on and so on.
Six Areas of Your Life
There’s a certain fear factor about “going green.” Many reasonable people think, “Wait a minute. I don’t wanna be shivering in the dark, just so I can save a little energy.”
But that’s not what it’s about. You’ll still be able to have a cool beverage and a warm shower. I’m just gonna show you how to have those things more efficiently.
I sometimes refer to my house as the SS
Begley,
and Rachelle claims that I run it like I’m the captain of a ship. But it’s all about efficiency, organization, maintenance, and conservation. And my house is just one area of my life where I’ve applied these principles.
My goal is to help you understand the choices you can make to simplify your life, to help the environment, to save energy, and to save money. In the pages that follow I’ll offer suggestions for all six of the areas in our lives where we can be more efficient:
•
home
•
transportation
•
recycling
•
energy
•
garden and kitchen
•
clothing and hair and skin care
Anyone who takes a step toward helping the environment makes me happy. I see people—even big businesses—making progress all the time. It doesn’t matter if it’s Wal-Mart or McDonald’s or one of my friends or neighbors. In the 10k of life, when a runner who seems to have been lagging behind sprints ahead, he deserves a pat on the back and assistance in the race.
I’ll help you discover some of the changes, large and small, that you can make. I’ve even marked these suggestions to make them easy to spot.
EASY CHANGES.
These are the low-hanging fruit. These are changes you can make almost effortlessly and at little or no expense—in fact, some may even save you money right off the bat! And virtually all of them will end up saving you money in the long term. These changes are noted with a symbol like the one at the left.
NOT-SO-BIG CHANGES.
These changes will cost you anywhere from $50 to just under $500 to implement, but while they require a bit more of a financial investment, each has a real, quantifiable payoff. You can spot these changes wherever you see this symbol.
BIG CHANGES.
Not surprisingly, some of the biggest payoffs require the biggest up-front investment. You may not be able to make a lot of these changes right away, but it’s worth knowing what they are as well as their benefits so you can make the best choices when it comes to replacing big-ticket items or doing significant work on your home. You can find these changes wherever you see this symbol.
Forward (and Onward)
I’m happy to report that I’ve seen a lot of progress since I first started on my own personal green campaign. In 1970 the air quality in Los Angeles was atrocious. You know how they have snow days back east? Well, in L.A., we had smog days, days when the air quality was so bad, children were told not to go to school!
Since then, the number of cars in the L.A. basin has quadrupled as the population and number of multicar households have grown. But you know what? The air quality has not gotten worse. It hasn’t even stayed the same.
It’s gotten
better.
We’ve got four times the cars and half the ozone. That’s really good.
That’s been over the course of nearly forty years, during a period when most people hadn’t even
started
thinking about how their actions might affect the environment. Imagine how much of a difference we can make in the
next
forty years, as people like you read this book and make just one or two or ten of the changes. Because this is a fight we can win in stages. Together, we can all get to the top of Mount Everest. Start with the low-hanging fruit, move on to the more significant changes, and before you know it, you’ll be living just like me.
