5 Movies with an Unintentional Green Message

I'm a pop culture junkie. Movies, TV, music?I love it all. I was absentmindedly thinking about a movie character one day when it hit me: The character does something that's green; he isn't meaning to be eco-friendly, but he is, and viewers can learn something from this character. This realization got me wondering something: What green habits have I learned from movies, when they weren't even trying to promote eco-living?

It turned out there were several, and I picked up some interesting habits and notions long before eco-living was a buzzword.

Pretty in Pink (1986)

Lesson: Thrift shops and your friend's cast-offs are a gold mine!

Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) didn't have much money to burn, but I loved the way she found her own style at thrift shops. And while I preferred Iona's pretty pink dress to Andie's mod prom creation, who doesn't love it when a girl can upcycle something that's just collecting dust?

Encino Man (1992)

Lesson: A little muscle goes a long way.

Dave wants to throw an after-prom pool party for his graduating class, which is, of course, to impress the most popular girl in school. The only problem: Dave's family doesn't have a pool. So Dave strikes up a deal with his dad: If he can dig the hole for the pool, he can have the party. The movie gets complicated when Dave and his friend Stoney find a caveman?who they thaw, and enroll at school. By the end of the film, the caveman has a cavegirl, Dave gets the girl he's been longing for, and the pool is ready for the party. Which just goes to show you don't always need to use gas-guzzling machines to get the job done. Sometimes you can do it yourself with your own power .

Man of the House (1995)

Lesson: DIY found art collages are awesome.

The movie was a dud (though it did get my 12-year-old, JTT-lovin' heart racing), but Sandy Archer (Farrah Fawcett) and her son Ben (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) made this really awesome collage of things they found on the beach. I was fascinated by the idea of building something out of a mix of natural elements and garbage that washed ashore. The beauty of a found art collage is it takes things that would otherwise end up in landfills or littering the planet, and it makes them a thing of beauty.

As Good As It Gets (1997)

Lesson: Carry utensils with you.

Marvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) had a serious case of OCD. But he did have an idea worth stealing: When you're out and about, bring some utensils?a fork and spoon at the very least. That way, when you pick up some take out for lunch or you hit up the local chip truck, you won't have to use a plastic fork.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Lesson: Don't mess with Mother Nature.

In Jurassic Park, scientists took dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber, then spliced the DNA with frog DNA to fill in the holes in the sequence, and cloned them to bring dinosaurs back to life?and we all know how well that turned out. Bottom line: Nothing good can come of messing with DNA. Carrying this idiom with me, I have to wonder if this movie isn't partly the cause of my suspicion of genetically modified foods. Is it really such a great idea to go messing with natural selection? Aren't we already getting the best there is? I'll stick with my GM-free corn, thank you very much.

Cara Smusiak writes on behalf of Naturally Savvy.com about how to live a more natural, organic and green lifestyle.