Zero Waste Movies & Green Celebrity Requests
Living Green
Meredith Medland Sasseen
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Episode 8 - Zero Waste Movies & Green Celebrity Requests

Sarah Haynes has a fifteen year history of celebrity dreams, she was the behind the scenes event producer for the first Zero Waste event with Julia Butterfly Hill and is now responsible for greening the largest Zero Waste 110,000 person music tour - the Virgin Festival with the Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins and The Police. Hear stories about celebrities that have challenged her to carry her own garbage for a week, riding on a bio-diesel and veggie oil bus to college campuses all over the US and how she creates new models and standards that she continues give away so that others can learn from her pioneering efforts. Sarah’s promotes her vision and integrity by choosing clients who respond to the call of the wild Daryl Hannah introduces Richard Branson to Sarah and together the two of them get hired to green the world’s largest Zero Waste Event, Woody Harrelson enrolls her in a 1,500 mile human powered bicycle tour across the United States and perhaps, just around the corner, she might be able to inspire a celebrity who will take her up on her latest dream to green the first major film with a Zero Waste plan. Sarah’s underlying philosophy is to leave a minimum impact on the planet and a maximum impact on the people this interview will keep you engaged, focused and amazed by the superpowers of this eco-clothed SuperWoman.

Transcript

Transcript

Which Major Film is going ”Zero Waste” first? Sarah Haynes of the Spitfire Agency Takes on Celebrity Requests that Continue to Push her to Eco-Extremes.

Announcer:  This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com

[Music]

Meredith Medland: Welcome to Living Green. I'm your host Meredith Medland. Today we are with Sarah Haynes--the CEO and founder of Spitfire Agency.

[swoosh sound]

Sarah Haynes: I've certainly had a few celebrities along the way that I've worked with that weren't. It kind of seemed to be more of a PR effort. But very few, I've got to say. I thought I'd run into way more. I mean the people that I run into are pushing me much further. Most of them are so far.

I mean, Daryl Hannah; I can barely talk about the mushroom man because I still don’t really understand a lot of it. People like Daryl Hannah and Woody are so well networked and have so much information that they are teaching me how to do it, which is great. I love it.

[swoosh sound]

Meredith Medland: What's one of the biggest lessons that Daryl Hannah has taught you?

[swoosh sound]

Sarah Haynes: Oh, I mean that happens a lot actually. We'll get asked to attach a celebrity's name to something that maybe isn’t really developed yet, and I don’t feel comfortable asking somebody to attach to it.

[swoosh sound]

Sarah Haynes: [laughing] Just kidding. I sold the money company. This is different.

[swoosh sound]

Sarah Haynes: You do something once to show it can be done. And then I give it away, give away the information and then I go off and try to do something else. So for me it's more like a little game.

Meredith Medland: Exactly. You're kind of a visionary event planner in a lot of ways.

Sarah Haynes: Yeah. Yeah. And it would make a lot of sense for me to hire on a big staff and continue doing every single event out there, but I'd rather teach them to do it and move on to the next one.

Meredith Medland: So you're an igniter.

Sarah Haynes: An igniter. Sure. Yeah, that'll work.

[swoosh sound]

Meredith Medland: Another one of the people that you spend time with is Daryl Hannah. And she's doing a lot in her TV episodes covering a lot of the green subjects. Actually, I watch her stuff because I love it. It helps me make my shows even better as well. Got a special moment with her, an inspiring moment?

Sarah Haynes: Well first of all I want to plug her show--Daryl Hannah Love Life, dhlovelife.com. Amazing podcasting and little video shows every week. They're fabulous.

[swoosh sound]

[music ends]

Meredith Medland: Sarah, tell us about Spitfire Agency.

Sarah Haynes: Hi. The Spitfire Agency is a full-service production, promotion, and marketing agency dedicated to nonprofits, responsible businesses, and other cause-related ventures.

Meredith Medland: Now when we go to your website--spitfireagency.com--you'll see lots of celebrities like Julia Butterfly Hill, Woody Harrelson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, all sorts of groups you've been working with. You have had a 15-year history of working with celebrities. How did you get into this?

Sarah Haynes: Well, prior to Spitfire I ran a company called On Board Entertainment that did sports and music festivals. So I met some celebrities at that time. And before that, I worked at Sony Music. So I met some celebrities during those days.

Then when I decided to do Spitfire, I sold On Board Entertainment. And I decided to do Spitfire because I was starting to really have a different outlook on activism and causes, and didn’t want to do as many X Games type events. I wanted to do events that were a little bit different. At that point I started really meeting celebrities and people were coming to me asking me to help them.

Meredith Medland: What are four of the events that you've done that our audience would perhaps recognize or be familiar with?

Sarah Haynes: Well, in terms of my real history it would be things like being involved in the Lilith Fair, Ozfest, and sponsorship things like that. But for the events that I'm doing currently, they're a little bit less well known than those national tours. But some of them, let's see, like probably the biggest one right now would be the Virgin Festival, which is Richard Branson's festival out in Baltimore. It's 110,000 people, and the Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, bands like that are playing, and we're greening that right now.

Meredith Medland: Let's talk about that. So what does it mean to be greening the Virgin Festival?

Sarah Haynes: Well, every event--there's different shades of green, right--so every event is different in terms of what they want to do. Virgin is going for it; they are going full out. So on every level we're trying to produce a zero-waste event. So, from how bands are getting from the airport to the event, we're looking at running all bio-diesel shuttles, ethanol shuttles, things like that. For how the generators are running onsite we're running those eco, we're having solar power. Everything that we can change, we're changing. All the food service, instead of being served in... You know, if you're going to buy a beer or a water, instead of getting it in a plastic cup you get it in a compostable bio-plastic cup. We are composting at a local farm that's 15 minutes down the road, so even our shipping is going to be low impact. There's not going to be anything handed out there that could be trash.

We can't control everything; you never know what somebody is going to bring in their backpack or what a sponsor might pull out of their hat when you're not ready for it. But for the most part everybody is really excited about it. And we're not bringing trash so there's nothing to be thrown away.

Meredith Medland: So how does your agency get involved in the creation of these events?

Sarah Haynes: Well, originally we were approached by Julia Butterfly Hill--the gal that climbed the redwood tree. And she had a nonprofit called Circle of Life, she still does. And they wanted to create an event that modeled all the solutions available out there. And I was already producing events and working with celebrities and working with nonprofits, but I wasn’t producing truly green events. I was producing what some people call a green event today--recycling, some organic local food, things like that. But they're not really that green, they're just sort of the basic first steps.

And she came to me and said "I want to prove that every single thing can be done completely differently, and I want to give that information out freely to anybody who wants to follow it. I want to create a guide--a greening events guide where people can learn everything they ever needed to learn. And we'll be the guinea pigs and we'll be the ones that have to go through the difficulty and figure it all out. And let's spend a year doing that. And then once we've done that, we'll give that information to others, and they can do it really quickly." So that's where it all started, and now it's just going into a bigger arena.

Meredith Medland: What about Woody Harrelson? You were responsible for his first tour and many others after that. Isn't that accurate?

Sarah Haynes: Yeah, I met Woody originally--he actually called me--through a friend, a mutual friend. And he was my first real big celebrity person that got behind what I was doing. I was already doing--this was before We the Planet and all that--and I was just getting out of the big corporate sponsored tours and getting into doing different sorts of programs. And I created a tour called The Spitfire Tour, which my company was then later named Spitfire. At the time I didn’t have this company. And I wanted to take musicians, actors, and activists around the country to speak about issues at college campuses.

And my friend Todd McCormick, who's a hemp activist, some people may have heard of him before, was friends with Woody and told him to call me, and Woody called. And he was, I guess, the first celebrity that I started working with. And then the floodgates opened because they're all friends with other folks, and you create one tour and other people hear about it. So it just grew from there.

Meredith Medland: What do you think the future of music festivals, concerts, and events will be as the Green movement moves all over the United States and beyond?

Sarah Haynes: Hmm. I mean, I think there will probably still be large-scale events that are really wasteful, and I think that some others will get it together and clean up. It's not that hard to do. It's really hard to wrap your mind around the first time; you have to be really committed. It takes some time to figure it all out. But it's not brain surgery, it's just living green. So it's just a matter of people being committed.

And I think the more visionary people that get excited about this sort of thing are going to be the first. Like, Julia Butterfly was the very first to produce a zero-waste event. I mean really zero-waste--15,000 people and we didn’t have a single trash can.

Now Richard Branson is really excited about doing it. Daryl Hannah, who's friends with him, convinced him to do it. And so now we're doing that together for him. So I think that those people are always like the kind of early adopters, and then other people read about it and hear about it, and go "Wow, if they could do it." You know, Richard said "Well, if they can do it for 20,000 we can do it for 100,000." And somebody else will read that and say "Well, if they can do it for 100,000 why we can't we do it for a five-day campout festival?" So it just grows from there.

Meredith Medland: What fuels you in this process? Why are you doing what you're doing?

Sarah Haynes: Money.

[laughter]

Sarah Haynes: I'm just kidding. I sold the money company. This is different.

Obviously, the environment and human rights and social activism and things like that are the deepest form of where it comes from. But actually I don’t even think of that immediately when you ask me that; I think of wanting to do something new and different. I was getting a little bit bored when I ran my larger marketing company. We did really cool amazing events, but it just didn’t feel visionary or different.

So I ran my company probably in a really poor business model, which is most companies create one thing and they do it over and over and over and over again, and perfect it, and be the best at it, and be the only one doing it, and make lots of money doing that. I try to do something once to show it can be done, and then I give it away. I give away the information and then I go off and try to do something else. So for me it's more like a little game.

Meredith Medland: Exactly. You're kind of a visionary event planner in a lot of ways.

Sarah Haynes: Yeah. Yeah. And it would make a lot of sense for me to hire on a big staff and continue doing every single event out there, but I'd rather teach them to do it and move on to the next one.

Meredith Medland: So you're an igniter.

Sarah Haynes: An igniter. Sure. Yeah, that'll work.

Meredith Medland: That'll work. All right, we'll when we come back from the break we're going to talk to you about what it means to be the Spitfire Agency.

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[music]

Meredith Medland: Welcome back. My name is Meredith Medland, and you're listening to Living Green. I'm here with Sarah Haynes from the Spitfire Agency.

Sarah, what does it mean to you to be living green?

Sarah Haynes: Well, I think living green is living what you love, living the environment. So, walking your talk is really what it means to me. And that's on every level of what you do. So, from what you wake up in--your sheets--onto your low-flow showerhead, and moving into what you eat for breakfast--is it local and organic? And how'd you get to work, did you ride a bike or walk, or if you're taking a car is it a hybrid or bio-diesel? On through your whole day, you know? Onto the late night if you're drinking the organic wine or not.

[laughter]

Meredith Medland: There you go!

Sarah Haynes: Is your TV solar powered?

Meredith Medland: That's a good bumper sticker: Is your TV solar powered? All right, so let's take a walk through your day. Maybe you might want to use yesterday or you could use today if you wish as well. Cite the examples in your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are living green.

Sarah Haynes: Wow. Okay, so you want me to walk through a day.

Meredith Medland: Yeah, it can be really simple. Just so we get a sense of... I mean you are absolutely surrounded in this. Your friends, Daryl Hannah, Woody Harrelson, these are just like my buddies from college friends. I mean these are just normal people in your life to have around you. These are big-time activists, very involved in the Green movement.

So illustrate to our audience what it is for you to be in, I would say, the green consciousness. And I'm willing to bet that if you just walk us through your day, our listeners will get a sense of how they can shift their behaviors or their attitudes by modeling what a day looks like for you.

Sarah Haynes: Wow. Okay. Well, I probably mess up a lot. So part of living green is making mistakes. So let's see, I'll try to go through yesterday. Well, one of the things for living green for me is when I hear green I don’t really think just of the environment, I think of everything that lives on this planet as well. So right now I have foster cats from the local shelter here in San Francisco called The Milo Foundation. So first thing when I woke up I went and fed the foster kitties that are in the back half of the house because my cats are not very friendly to new cats. And their human died, their mom died, so I'm taking care of them until they can find them a home.

I did walk to work, but not so much for the environment, I'm just trying to get exercise. Walked down the thousand steps downtown Mill Valley to go to work. Lets' see... My office is green, we have no-VOC paints and everything; all the paper is 100% recycled and tree-free. I don’t know, you can see looking around. I don’t know.

Meredith Medland: What about water bottles and coffee containers? Talk to us about some of your habits and maybe some of the changes that you've made, even recently, that are characteristic of what it means to be living green.

Sarah Haynes: Well, I do try my best to carry my own cup but I fail occasionally and end up buying a paper coffee cup. But I am working hard on carrying my own cup. I don’t know, I feel like I'm promoting myself. This is hard. [laughs] Next question?

Meredith Medland: All right, next question. So I've got another good one. I emailed Sarah a couple questions in advance. One of the questions that I emailed her was one you'll hear on a lot of my episodes, which is "If you could create three outcomes within three months, what would they be?"

Sarah Haynes: That's a really tough question to answer. I think the outcomes that I can achieve I do achieve. Like if there's something I really want to do I know I can do it. You get what you give, you know. But put it into it and it'll come back. So I think all of those things are actually happening. Like I always wanted to do a zero-waste festival that was really big, and the largest we've done is 15,000 people, so now here we're doing this 100,000-person festival. So those things are already put into action.

In terms of the things that... When you asked that question I think of the things I can't achieve and then I think about, like, famine and... [laughs]  Getting people to look at adoption as closely as they look at having their own kids, and trying to get all the animals spayed and neutered around the world. Things like that, that are the things that no matter how hard I try it's not going to end overnight. Everything that comes to my mind right now, that's my priority I am working on, yeah.

Meredith Medland: Of the events that you've produced or planned and participated in, give us some splashes of highlights of moments where you were just like "This is so awesome! I'm living my dreams."

Sarah Haynes: Oh, yeah. I've got lots of those. One that comes immediately to mind is this tour I did with Woody Harrelson called the Simple Organic Living Tour--the SOL tour. And it's always fun for me to work with the people that are the toughest and that really want to push it, because I already push myself in life, and I generally achieve the things I'm trying to push myself toward. But when other people come along and they have even bigger ideas, then I feel the pressure, you know, and then it's really fun.

So Woody came along and he said, "I really like the Spitfire tour that I'm on and all, but I got my own idea, and here's what I want to do. And can you make this happen?" And it was this tour that turned out to be the Simple Organic Living tour. And he wanted to build a bus, you know, go out find a bus, rebuild it, run it all bio-diesel, change everything. Create the model, right. So everything from how the bus runs to all the fabrics inside to having solar kitchens and greenhouses in the back growing food. I mean Woody just goes crazy, right, with ideas.

So he wanted to do that, he wanted to go to college campuses. It was during the big energy crisis in California like four years ago, so he wanted to actually ride his bike the whole way. So we went across the country, Woody on his bike and a couple of his buddies with him. And then the bus just followed them, and that's where they slept. So they were completely off the grid in everything they did.

And that was really fun. That was like sitting on a bus with Woody and everybody and getting all the bikes together and traveling across the country for a couple months. It was like "Wow! If I could see myself when I was 18 I would be so thrilled." When you're in it you lose a little bit of that, I think, because there was so much that you put into it to get there that it's not like this big surprise. But if I had just woken up in my life that day I would have been blown away. And those are the kind of times where I go "Wow, this is really fun!"

Meredith Medland: That's a great story. Another one of the people that you spend time with is Daryl Hannah. And she's doing a lot in her TV episodes covering a lot of green subjects. Actually, I watch her stuff her stuff because I love it. It helps me make my shows even better as well. Got a special moment with her, an inspiring moment?

Sarah Haynes: Yeah, sure. Well first of all, I want to plug her show--Daryl Hannah Love Life, dhlovelife.com. Amazing podcasting and little video shows every week. They're fabulous. Let's see, inspiring moments with Daryl. She's a newer person for me; I only met her about a year or two ago. But she got really excited; when I first met her I signed her up to be on a panel at a conference. It was called Forces of Nature. And she introduced me to some really interesting people.

There is a guy named Paul Stamets, I believe, and he is a mushroom man, he's really into mushrooms. And he has come up with various strains of mushrooms that can do really amazing things for this earth. They can clean up oil spills. Like, if you can grow mushrooms... They've actually done tests like this. So where oil spills are, they grow mushrooms, the mushrooms absorb the properties in the oil spill, and then the mushrooms later don’t have any of the chemicals or anything in the actual mushroom later.

I don’t know if I'm explaining this really badly. And I don’t know a whole lot about it, but I'm sure you can look it up. He's got all sorts of books.

He also has, oh, there's a mushroom that grows on old-growth wood that carries some properties that have been used to cultivate smallpox vaccines. And after the 9/11 stuff with the government being really concerned about bio-terrorism he's actually been able to submit this.

Meredith Medland: Great story. And if you go to the Episode page of Living Green, under Sarah's bio we have links, so you can link on that. So if you'd like more information that'll be there. So go ahead and just check that out. If you found our show on iTunes, just go to PersonalLifeMedia.com, go to Living Green, Meredith Medland, go to the episode with Sarah and you'll find it there.

So what do you think it takes to be a "real" green celebrity?

Sarah Haynes: Well, I don’t think it's any different than being a real green human of any form. I get why people pay attention to celebrity. I mean it’s certainly one of the reasons I work with celebrities is because it gets the word out. It's just having a larger frequency. But I think being green in any form of your life is being authentic and caring about it. If there were no one else left on this planet you'd still be doing it. You know, just really coming from a true place.

I've certainly had a few celebrities along the way that I've worked with that weren’t. It kind of seemed to be more of a PR effort. But very few, I've got to say. I though I'd run into way more. I mean the people that I run into are pushing me much further. Most of them are so far. I mean Daryl Hannah; I can barely talk about the mushroom man because I still don’t really understand a lot of it. People like Daryl Hannah and Woody are so well networked and have so much information that they are teaching me how to do it, which is great. I love it.

Meredith Medland: What's one of the biggest lessons that Daryl Hannah has taught you?

Sarah Haynes: She's really stubborn in a good way. And I guess I am too, so I don’t know that that's so much of a lesson. But she just really holds out for what she believes in. She kind of stands the line.

Meredith Medland: When have you received a request for information for your company to do business that you've declined due to your own belief system?

Sarah Haynes: Oh, I mean that happens a lot actually. We'll get asked to attach a celebrity's name to something that maybe isn’t really developed yet, and I don’t feel comfortable asking somebody to attach to it. Or maybe isn’t that well thought out.

I was asked to create a standard, almost like what a lead standard is for buildings, for events by a company that had an event that wasn’t green at all. Not one thing about it. And they said they had the funding and we'll create this big standard and we'll promote it around the country. And I said, "How about you green your event first? And then we’ll green the standard." You know, let's create the standard around an event that's already green, not around this one that you want to promote. And I think they were good people, I think they really did want to do it. And they have actually since come back to me and wanted to do it in a different form.

So I think for the most part people mean well, they're maybe just not quite there. Like their ideas are really... They get excited and they have all these ideas to do it. But if they're not really doing the baby steps, I'm not going to promote them as doing anything more.

Meredith Medland: Now you are a, I'm going to call you a "behind the scenes celebrity." That's going to be my name for you. And much like you referenced Daryl Hannah or other celebrities having a really large frequency and access to and knowledge of a lot of information, I know you do too. So if you had 90 seconds to communicate a message to 30 million, sorry, to 3 million people or more, and hey, if it’s 30 million that's great too, what would that message be?

Sarah Haynes: I'd tell them not to listen to me and to be the media themselves. I don’t have that much to say. I imagine there are lots of people out there that know a heck of a lot more than me that could have something to say. And then I'd tell them about my pyramid scheme and have them all send me a dollar. So that'd be like what, 3 million dollars? We could do a lot with that money.

Meredith Medland: We could do a lot with that money. So what I'm hearing you say is really listen internally and speak what you hear inside really.

Sarah Haynes: Yeah, that's a good answer. That's what I meant to say exactly.

Meredith Medland: Well, I know that people who work behind the scenes are definitely really good listeners. I experience that all the time, and I think we could do whole shows on the hidden celebrities, and that'd be pretty interesting.

Sarah Haynes: Yeah, you could probably do a whole show on all the people that would tell you that I'm not that great of a listener too.

Now, Richard Branson is really excited about doing it. Daryl Hannah, who's friends with him convinced him to do it, and so now we're doing it.

Meredith Medland: Every person that I've talked to who has either connected me to you or forwarded your name to me has spoken amazing things. They said that you walk your walk, you decline offers from very big opportunities if they're not in alignment with your personal values, and that they consistently have the experience of feeling supported and loved by you.

Sarah Haynes: Wow! I'm really thrilled to hear that. [laughs] I think those are really patient people.

Meredith Medland: So let's talk about your behaviors, your values, and your belief systems in kind of any order. How do you go about making your decisions and what's important to you?

Sarah Haynes: How do I go about making my decisions? Do you just mean in life in general?

Meredith Medland: Well, I suspect they're very similar in life and in business. So green is starting to be the new, hip, cool thing. And on my blog I talk a lot about how I think that music festivals in particular will start to mirror eco-villages, almost mini Burning Mans. It's something I really believe. I just interviewed Larry Harvey a few weeks ago, and I'm just gathering information to prove whether or not that is true. And it just seems like it’s going that way.

So is suspect work that might be coming up for you is greening the whole eco-festival type environment that's really a mainstream concert event. But those requests are going to come and come and come, and you'll have to decipher. So as you decipher for opportunity, what values do you hold to make those decisions?

Sarah Haynes: Pretty much what we've talked about throughout this interview, which is just do I feel good about it, do I think it's authentic, is there something I can contribute to, do they really need my help, could they do it on their own, would they learn more doing it on their own or is this such a big thing that they're really going to need more people on the team. And, is it different? You know, for me, it's like once it's been done a couple times the information is out there. It's not that hard to green your own festival if you really want to. And it really doesn’t cost much more. Everybody thinks, you know, "Oh, recycled paper, it's going to cost more," and it doesn’t. It doesn’t cost any different. Here's how it worked, this is where we failed, this is where we succeeded, here's how you can do it even better.

Then I'd like to move on and do something even different. I'm talking to, there's a documentary film coming out on somebody I know, and they want it to be green. There have been no films made completely green that I know of. So that would be really different and exciting. And there are some people that I work with that work in TV and film that really want to see that happen.
Alicia Silverstone is really excited about doing that. In fact, if you watch her TV show and some things like that, she's always carrying her own mug and doing everything. She slides in her own little subliminal messages as much as she can. I don’t want to be greening festivals in ten years; I want you guys to be greening festivals in ten years. Hopefully by then we'll be on to films and ten other things.

Meredith Medland: That sounds awesome. Now every show we are asking our guest to give an eco-challenge. So this challenge, listeners, is something you can take on through next year's Earth Day. And each episode you'll find has an eco-challenge request in it. And Sarah, what is your eco-challenge request for our listeners?

Sarah Haynes: I'm going to steal this one from Julia Butterfly because she actually made this one of me, and it was really tough and it was really fun, and very telling. She challenged me to carry my own garbage for a week everywhere I went. That's to every business meeting you go to including flights, everything you do. You can't check it in on the luggage; you have to carry it.

And you really start realizing where you are using trash. Like for instance, I never thought about if I were to get a bottle to drink or a drink on tap. So if you're going to a bar, why would you get a bottled beer when you could get a beer on tap with a real glass that gets washed later, and you don't have to carry that bottle around with you for the next week. Of course it gets recycled, or hopefully it gets recycled, but using it in the first place isn’t necessarily a good thing even if it does get recycled. So you start realizing all the things you don’t need. You eat less too, which is good for me.

But it was amazing. I had to carry my European backpack. I had to carry a gigantic backpack full of stuff, and immediately I started figuring out tricks. Then I did it another week, about a month later, and I carried a small book bag.

Meredith Medland: Wow! Listeners, I hope you can take on. I may take that on. I'm going to take that on. That is absolutely extraordinary. So we had, let's see, I just want to go through a run through.

So we had Lesley Nagy from Your Green Report, she does a green report four days a week that's also disseminated across the United States. So her challenge was to just decline plastic water bottles from this point forward, get a stainless steel mug.

Let's see, we also had Zem Joaquin of EcoFabulous say "Hey, it's time to bring your own mug to Starbucks or whatever coffee shop you're going to, and stop using paper cups."

And now, Sarah, we've got you saying carrying your garbage, which is essentially your baggage, for a week. So listeners, if you're ready to take that on, that's Sarah's challenge for you.

Sarah Haynes: So it isn’t really my idea, it's Julia Butterfly's. But I definitely would suggest carrying your own trash for a week; it's pretty impactful.

Meredith Medland: All right, carrying your own trash for a week. We're going to be back from the break. We're going to ask Sarah a few more questions and then be wrapping it up. So stay tuned, and here's a message from our sponsors. Thanks for listening to Living Green.

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[music]

Meredith Medland: Welcome back. You're listening to Living Green, and I'm here with Sarah Haynes. Sarah, were getting ready to wrap up the show. If you could leave a legacy, and certainly you will, what would that legacy be, and what is your living legacy?

Sarah Haynes: Wow. Okay. You ask really tough questions. I guess your legacy is something you leave after you're gone. So I think that would be up for y'all to decide. You can ask the people that knew me what my legacy was.

But I can tell you that I was on an airplane, and I proceeded to blurt out the mission of my company at the time--On Board Entertainment is a full service production, promotion and marketing... You know. What? What's that? And he said, "No, yours. You. What's your mission?" And I had no idea. I was like "I must have a mission, how could I go through life without having a mission statement, right?" That makes perfect sense. I told him "Well, by the time we get off this plane I'm going to have a mission statement for you." And my mission statement was to leave minimum impact on the planet and maximum impact on its people. Now I don’t know if that will be my legacy or not. It's a constant challenge, and I fail just as often as I succeed, so we'll see. But I guess that's what I aim to be.

Meredith Medland: Well, for me a living legacy is how I feel when I walk out the door and conclude the interview and our listeners go on to our next podcast or continue on with their day. So I definitely feel like that's what's happened to me. So reducing my waste, taking on the week of carrying my garbage around, and really being inspired to carry the message of green. So, Sarah Haynes, thank you so much for joining me today on Living Green. It's great to have you on the show.

Sarah Haynes: Thanks; you summed that up quite well.

Meredith Medland: For text and transcripts of this show and other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, go ahead and go to www.personallifemedia.com. My name is Meredith Medland, and thank you for listening to Living Green.

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