08/22/2016 - THE GREEN SHOW

This week, Slow Living Celebrates people and organizations working towards a more green, sustainable and healthy planet and healthier lives.

Judi Shils

Executive Director

Turning Green.

Judi Shils has spent the last 14 years of her life spearheading grassroots community projects. While attending a Marin County Supervisors meeting in 2002, she listened to concerned citizens pose questions about the high cancer rates in their neighborhoods and express thoughts as to possible cause. The dearth of answers led Shils to form the Marin Cancer Project: Search for the Cause, and then the youth-driven movement for sustainable change, non-profit, Turning Green. As well, Shils worked with students and ethical business partners to create the first line of eco-body products for this generation launched nationally with Whole Foods Market in 2008. In 2013 she created the first organic/non GMO-school lunch program called The Conscious Kitchen. In 2015, with two kitchens opened for business, the Sausalito Marin City School District became the first organic non-GMO school district in the nation. 

After attending Temple University and American University, Shils started her Emmy Award-winning career with ABC Sports in New York and remained in television for 25 years. in 1988, Shils moved to Los Angeles, and produced the first critically acclaimed reality television special “3,000 miles, 21 days, 10 cents” for Fox Television. In 1989, a move to the Bay Area and motherhood to daughter Erin, changed the course of her life. In 1995, Shils created the successful Diary Project (DP), one of the very first on-line forums for teenagers to discuss their lives, as well as an accompanying newspaper component and Emmy Award-winning television series called “Life in Progress” on Oxygen TV. As well she produced a stage version of the DP, with the script created from website entries. Shils’ environmental work began at the California Coastal Commission, where she has been a consultant since 1996, focusing on public education programs and the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day.

History, Turning Green

Teens For Safe Cosmetics, as the campaign was originally called, launched in January of 2005. 80 forward-thinking and inquisitive teens attended a meeting in Marin County, California about the harmful chemicals in beauty and daily use products. Cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm, asthma, and other serious health risks were linked directly to many ingredients in products young people use daily. This information shocked everyone! Driven by outrage at lack of oversight, transparency, and protection of public health, coupled with a desire to raise awareness about eco responsible living amongst young peer groups, the campaign was born.

Under the guidance of Executive Director Judi Shils (who founded Search For The Cause in 2002, to probe into Marin County’s skyrocketing cancer rates), and her daughter, then 13-year-old Erin Schrode, teens began to come together for meetings each Sunday. What began around their kitchen table soon grew to have chapters throughout middle and high schools in the area.

Early work of the campaign focused on identifying the personal care products most used by teens – and collaborating with chemists to outline the risk factors of specific ingredients. This research is what created Dirty Thirty: a list of common ingredients to avoid, what products contain them, and the health risks they pose. Subsequently, they developed a list of Greener Alternatives: personal care product companies vetted for safety, sustainability and efficacy. 

As the movement grew in size and scope, legislative action became a vital piece of TG.  Not deterred by industry lobbyists, a group of campaign members went to Sacramento to lobby in support of SB484, a bill requiring disclosure of hazardous ingredients by manufacturers to the Department of Public Health. This eleventh hour push by TG played a key role in the CA Governor signing the bill into law. Subsequent lobbying highlights have included the Toxic Toys Bill, Nail Salon Worker Rights, a ban on lead from lipsticks, TSCA hearings, and the Green Chemistry Initiative, among others ranging from local to national levels.

With their work clearly reaching outside the realm of cosmetics, into many aspects of eco responsible lifestyle, the name changed to Teens Turning Green in 2007. This represents the transition, the journey to ‘green.’ New chapters began to spring up across the country, with a stronghold in New York City that hosted numerous events, garnered widespread school participation, and received high profile media attention from the New York Times, ABC, CNN, People Magazine, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, ELLE, The NY Post, and many more around the world.

In 2008, TTG officially launched a Schools platform, using campuses as a palette for exploration around food service, janitorial supplies, landscaping, and classroom products. Through investigation and case study analysis, students raise awareness amongst peers and teachers about toxic exposures and seek to introduce and implement greener, non-toxic alternatives.

Food rose to the forefront, particularly lunches, as health and nourishment affects students in direct and vital ways. Marin county, like the rest of the country and much of the world, is experiencing an acute crisis of affordable, quality food that is good for people and the planet. Project Lunch, which we spearheaded alongside 400 stakeholders, aims to rethink and transform the system to ensure nutritious, locally-sourced, balanced, non-processed meals in schools and beyond.  Hence, Conscious Kitchen, which Justin Everett, Executive Chef of Cavallo Point Lodge, helped spearhead. 

In Marin County, they also worked tirelessly on legislation to ban single use bags under the BYOBag movement. The bag ban was signed into law and went into effect on January 12, 2012. There is much more to be done, but progress is invigorating.

The mother-daughter duo behind TTG, Judi and Erin, also created and launched the first ever Project Green Challenge. This 30-day eco lifestyle challenge took place in October 2011 – with over 2,600 students from 510+ schools in 48 states and 21 countries! 

Artwork at Oxbow School

OXBOW SCHOOL

Stephen Thomas, Founding Director and Head of School

Stephen came to The Oxbow School as the Founding Director from his position as the chair of the art department at The Urban School of San Francisco, where he taught from 1984-1998. In 1990, Stephen was instrumental in developing the Aim High summer program at the Urban School site. In 1994-95, he was awarded a Klingenstein Fellowship to study at Columbia University's Teacher's College. In the late 1970's, before he encountered teaching, Stephen worked at Crown Point Press, printing intaglio editions for artists. He ran his own printmaking business from 1980 to 1992.

Alex Kielty, Environmental Science Instructor

After earning his BA in Psychology at St. John's University in rural Minnesota, Alex taught outdoor education focused on ecology adventure and agricultural science. More recently, Alex has spent years working on and managing pastured livestock, orchards and mixed vegetable CSA's with an eye towards sensible and modern land use management and food cultivation. These practical experiences have enabled Alex to appreciate the complexity of our contemporary food system, allowing him to address the challenges surrounding the balance between environmental crises and feeding the planet in the classroom. Alex's approach to teaching agroecology focuses on the craft of land-stewardship, the wonder of biological processes, and exploring the myriad means of creating a food system with a greater level of integrity.

“THE RICHNESS OF THE STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCE AT OXBOW PREPARES THEM FOR THE INTENSE ACADEMIC AND STUDIO OPPORTUNITIES THAT FOLLOW AT COLLEGES LIKE RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN.”

— Roger Mandle Past President, RISD

The Oxbow School is a single-semester art and academically focused school for high school juniors and seniors in beautiful Napa, CA. At Oxbow students are immersed in an environment of critical thinking and creative problem solving that prepares them for life after high school. Students come from all over the country and internationally to learn from our distinguished faculty and world-renowned visiting artists.

At Oxbow they believe that immersive studio art practice and direct contact with artists are potent ways to engage students at this moment in their lives. Studio practice is not about waiting for inspiration; artists create problems, and then solve them, all along the way responding to materials that re-shape the originating question-and in so doing, opening new ideas and possibilities. Students leave Oxbow with the acquisition and ownership of a 'tool-kit' of skills that can be reconfigured to meet the challenges of ever-changing goals and environments.

The Oxbow curriculum is designed to fulfill the requirements of the nation's best public and private high schools and is as much about academics as it is about art making. All of the courses at Oxbow are fully accredited and are honors level and college preparatory.

n 1998, founders Ann Hatch and Robert and Margrit Mondavi sought to create a studio art environment where artists, faculty and students would collaborate in the practice of intellectual investigation and artistic inquiry. They acquired a three-acre site on Third Street in Napa, CA overlooking the Napa River and commissioned Modernist architect Stanley Saitowitz to design the campus. Each studio is a fully equipped 1,250-square-foot building, featuring 18-foot high ceilings and expansive glass garage doors that let in light and roll up to an inspiring view of the river. Since it's founding Oxbow's reputation has grown nationally and internationally as one of the best programs available to students interested in the arts.

Oxbow was one of a kind when it was founded, and remains so to this day.