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Eco House Challenge – Episode 1, Stop Your Gassing (2007)

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Two Aussie families education content clip 1

Original classification rating: G. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

Both families are introduced in this pre-title sequence so that we can begin to empathise, while the eco coach and the moderator explain the ground rules of the challenge.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

The families are well chosen. They’re very different although both have four children and are middle class. The Edwards seem more able to withstand the loss of some of their cherished comforts while the Shepherds are reeling under the strain of losing their individual television sets, their several cars and their enormous electricity usage. This all makes for great television.

The program succeeds because we’re able to see ourselves in these families. We love our hot showers, our private vehicles and our sprinkler systems and swimming pools. Although we’d love to play our part in reducing our environmental footprint, we’re not so keen when it interferes with our daily lives. The terrific thing about the eco challenge is that the series is not expecting us to return to a life in the trees but to make a few behavioural and technological changes that will have a huge positive impact on the environment.

Prospero Films have been able to sell this highly entertaining and original idea around the world. Canada has bought the completed programs while the franchise has been sold to countries like Ireland and Spain. Their London distributor is continuing to make sales around the world.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows an opening sequence from Eco House Challenge that introduces the Edwards and the Shepherds, the two families participating in the challenge to live in a more environmentally sustainable way, and their ‘eco coach’, Tanya Ha. Against a jazz soundtrack a narrator introduces the two families. Footage of the families at home sets the domestic scene and the parents help to introduce them. The final scene is of Ha in an eco-friendly house as she describes the show’s environmental challenge, which ‘starts in the home’.

Educational value points

  • Eco House Challenge addresses the issue of global warming, which is caused by human activity that involves burning fossil fuels such as petrol, gas and oil. This has led to an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. Per capita, Australia is among the worst greenhouse polluters, partly because of a reliance on coal-burning power plants, which in 2005 generated 78 per cent of electricity used in Australia.
  • Australian households contribute about 20 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions through everyday activities such as electricity use, transport and the production of household waste that decays in landfills. By challenging the two families to reduce their household waste and use of energy, water and transport with the help of ‘eco coach’ Tanya Ha, Eco House Challenge aimed to promote ideas about ecological sustainability in the household to a wider audience.
  • Tanya Ha’s observation that environmentally ‘we’re living beyond our means’ is supported by the fact that in 2004 Australia’s ecological footprint, a measure of how much land and water is used to produce the resources to sustain a human population, was 7.7 ha per person, compared with the average global footprint of 2.2 ha. The Australian Conservation Foundation believes that to be sustainable Australians need to reduce their ecological footprint to 1.8 ha.
  • This opening sequence, backed by a compelling jazz score, engages viewers with rapid edits and freeze frames that give an overview of the two families and their household dynamics. Individual personalities are established through character markers, for example Spike is ‘logistically minded’ and Shauna is a ‘domestic workhorse’, and oppositions are set up with the Edwards depicted as organised, while the wasteful Shepherd children lounge about.
  • Increasing affluence has led to a rise in household energy consumption (by 25 per cent between 1995 and 2004) putting pressure on resources and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. A 2005 Australia Institute report, Wasteful Consumption in Australia, found that young people and affluent households with annual incomes over $100,000 tend to be more wasteful, illustrated by the Shepherd children’s use of a clean towel every time they shower.