Environmental Communication

Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2010, pp. 172
189

Everyday Epiphanies: Environmental

Networks in Eco-Makeover Lifestyle
Television
Geoffrey Craig

This article offers an analysis of the New Zealand eco-makeover program, WA$TED! It
outlines how eco-makeover programs are an emerging sub-genre of the makeover
phenomenon of lifestyle television where people and homes are subject to transformation
by lifestyle experts, culminating in the revelation of the transformation at the end of the
program. The article argues that the featured families in WA$TED! experience ‘‘everyday
epiphanies’’ where they learn about their implication in existing environmental networks
and they are ushered into new, more environmentally friendly networks. Drawing on
actor-network theory, the article deconstructs the featured environmental networks,
examining the roles of the program hosts, the transformations in the subjectivities of
family members, and the functions of everyday household technologies and objects. The
article argues that the significance of the program resides in the way the revelations make
visible previously concealed linkages between families, everyday objects and practices,
and the broader social and environmental domain.

Keywords: Makeover; Environment; Networks; Lifestyle; Television; Actor-Network

The growing environmental consciousness that has arisen in recent years due to the high-
profile threats of climate change has begun to permeate through to lifestyle-television
formats where programs are presenting the challenges and opportunities associated
with more sustainable lifestyles. This ‘greening’ of lifestyle television has been
particularly evident in cooking programs that are framed around ethical and
environmentally friendly food production and consumption although the phenom-
enon extends to downshifting and other manifestations of ‘‘slow living’’ (Parkins &
Craig, 2006), as materialized in programs such as the River Cottage series. Green
lifestyle programs have also adopted the more generalized lifestyle television genre of

Geoffrey Craig is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Otago. Correspondence to:
Geoffrey Craig, Department of Politics, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. Email:
Geoff.craig@otago.ac.nz

ISSN 1752-4032 (print)/ISSN 1752-4040 (online) # 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17524031003775620
 Everyday Epiphanies 173

the ‘‘makeover.’’ These ‘‘eco-makeover’’ programs seek to transform ecologically

ignorant families into more responsible environmental subjects.
This study examines one such program*the New Zealand show, WA$TED!*and
argues that a significant function of the program is the generation of ‘‘everyday
epiphanies,’’ where the featured families come to realize their implication in
environmental networks. The concept of an epiphany, or a sudden revelation, often
has religious and spiritual connotations, and it is usually associated as a singular,
unique experience, but the unusual conjunction of ‘‘everyday epiphanies’’ is used here
deliberately to turn our attention to the significance of processes of revelation and
learning that also occur from engagement with the mundane objects and experiences
of quotidian existence.1 More broadly, the idea of an epiphany raises the issue of how
cognitive change occurs: how is it that people change their minds, how are processes
of instruction and education implemented? The functions of epiphanies in such
questions have been tackled in a number of disciplinary contexts, such as psychiatry
(Miller & C’de Baca, 2001), that are beyond the scope of this study, but such issues
are obviously germane to environmental education (Legault & Pelletier, 2000) and
environmental citizenship (Gough & Scott, 2006).
WA$TED! replicates the conventional makeover narrative where a final moment of
revelation follows the transformation of program participants by lifestyle experts but
the analysis here focuses on moments throughout the program when families express
surprise and shock as they learn how their existing everyday household practices*
their energy use, their garbage disposal, their modes of transport*are part of
previously unknown complex environmental networks that have local, national, and
global ramifications. In addition, the study discusses the processes by which the
featured families are ushered into new environmental networks, examining the roles
of the program hosts, the families and the material objects that are also an important
feature of such new networks. WA$TED! is in many ways a conservative text,
encouraging environmental responsibility with cash rewards and disciplining the
practices and values of ordinary families through the strictures of lifestyle experts, but
the study also investigates how the program problematizes the everyday life of modern
consumers and aligns environmental responsibility with discourses of care, quality of
life, neighborliness, and more collective expressions of solidarity. This study, drawing
on actor-network theory (ANT), explores the revelation and transformation of
environmental networks in WA$TED! where the varying assemblages of individuals,
technologies, modes of distribution and the ‘‘stuff ’’ of everyday life have considerable
consequence for both individual households and the health of the planet.

Lifestyle and Eco-Makeover Television

Lifestyle television has been a growing genre over the past decade with programs
devoted to subjects such as self-improvement, DIY home improvement, fashion,
food, travel, gardening and health. It is difficult to generalize about the broad range of
programs that can be collected under the umbrella of lifestyle television but the genre
can be defined by its status as ‘‘infotainment,’’ its content focus on the everyday life of
174 G. Craig

ordinary individuals, together with the accessible dispersal of friendly advice about
necessary quotidian skills and knowledge by program experts. Lifestyle television can
be categorized as a subset of the broader category of ‘‘reality television.’’ The obvious
issues of representation and transparency implicit in the term ‘‘reality television’’ has
been thoroughly critiqued (Heller, 2007; Murray & Ouellette, 2004) with Bratich
(2007, pp. 6
7, original emphasis) noting that reality television ‘‘may be less about
representing reality than intervening in it; less mediating and more involving’’ and
‘‘less an esthetic genre than a set of techniques and social experiments . . .’’
The idea of lifestyle that informs lifestyle television, and lifestyle media more
generally, usually addresses an easily recognized type of modern consumer subjectivity
but more recently the term has been also mobilized to account for emerging ethical and
political responses to the dilemmas of contemporary existence. The concept of lifestyle
has been conventionally associated with the burgeoning Western culture of consump-
tion that has figured in the displacement of traditional class cultures and the emergence
of postmodernism (Featherstone, 2007). As such, more traditional, stable, and
collective ‘‘ways of life’’ have given way to modern, individualistic ‘‘lifestyles’’ informed
less by social relations and more by consumption patterns (Chaney, 2001). Lifestyle is
particularly associated with popular media, consumerism, and a middle class
subjectivity (that includes an aspirational orientation to the lifestyles of those rich
individuals beyond the middle class). This subject position is characterized by a
perceived dislocation from civic life and a retreat to the shelter of private life, captured
in concepts such as ‘‘cocooning’’ (Cullens, 1999). Such a short hand designation,
however, overlooks a more generalized significance of lifestyles. As David Chaney has
observed, lifestyles are ‘‘patterns of action that differentiate people’’ (Chaney, 1996,
p. 4) and consequently they can also be understood as ‘‘existential projects’’ (Chaney,
1996, p. 86) with political and normative ramifications. It has been argued that lifestyle
engagements are also refiguring civic culture and initiating new forms of political
engagement (Bennett, 1998, 2003; Craig, 2007).
Lifestyle television variously draws on, represents, and mobilizes the domains and
features of ordinary, everyday existence. The ordinariness of lifestyle television resides
in its mundane subject matter, the type of people who participate in the shows, and the
style of presentation in the programs (Bonner, 2003, p. 44).2 The ordinariness of
lifestyle television derives from its predominant focus on the setting of the home,
families, and everyday consumption practices and patterns. In such programs,
subjectivity and cultural value derive from the association or linkage between self
and the objects and practices that constitute family and home living. Lifestyle
television is fundamentally concerned with the knowledges and skills that are
necessary for the successful negotiation and management of the exigencies of
contemporary existence.3
Another notable feature of lifestyle television is the role of the program host and
associated presenters. These figures, as media professionals, do much more than
facilitate the unfolding of the program. They also provide particular forms of
expertise about the ordinary subjects of the lifestyle shows: the intricacies associated
with growing roses, the provision of nutritious lunches for children, or inexpensive
 Everyday Epiphanies 175

and tasteful ways to engage in a family-room makeover. As has been previously noted
(Brunsdon, 2003; Brunsdon, Johnson, Moseley, & Wheately, 2001; Taylor, 2002),
there has been a historical transformation in the figure of the lifestyle host: an earlier
didactic form of expertise that facilitated a technical engagement with the program’s
subject matter and an emphasis on skill acquisition, has given way to a more
egalitarian mode of address where the focus is on dramatic revelations and the
pleasures associated with changes that occur throughout the program. While
acknowledging this broad historical shift in the ‘‘balance . . . between instruction
and spectacle’’ (Brunsdon et al., 2001, p. 54) contemporary lifestyle television still,
of course, involves pedagogical strategies and a variety of rhetorical modes
of engagement with program participants and viewers. Popular programs,
such as Changing Rooms and What Not To Wear, for example, often seek to humiliate
or embarrass program participants*albeit in a ‘‘friendly’’ manner*in order for
them to engage in self-surveillance and recognize the need for change.
The generally personable manner of many contemporary lifestyle experts should
also not divert us from an acknowledgement that lifestyle television continues to
constitute a ‘‘technology of government’’: ‘‘an assemblage of forms of practical
knowledge, . . . modes of perception, practices of calculation, vocabularies, types of
authority, [and] forms of judgement . . .’’ (Rose, 1999, p. 52). Lifestyle television, in
this sense, is a particular means of addressing a fundamental problematic in
contemporary governance: the implementation of productive rather than repressive
modes of governance that facilitate, in the contexts of social freedoms, the capacities
of citizens to act on their own behalf in their cultivation of normal and rational
selves, in accord with the common good (Cruikshank, 1999; Rose, 1999). It is the
nexus between public objectives for a well-functioning society and individual desires
for self-improvement and well being that afford a key role to the kind of experts that
are so prevalent in lifestyle television (Rose, 1999, p. 74).
The desire for self-improvement and the practices that implement such personal
changes have been supported and promoted through broad media and social
phenomena such as self-help literature and the ‘‘wellness revolution.’’ In lifestyle
television it is manifested in the makeover phenomenon that charts the transforma-
tion of people, relationships, homes, and lifestyles over the course of the program.
The process of the makeover provides the narrative drive of lifestyle programs and
culminates in the moment of ‘‘revelation’’ where participants and viewers are shown
the new and improved person/object. The makeover genre has often focused on the
fashion and appearance of individuals although it has also extended to renovation or
home makeover programs and it has also extended to a variety of different social
‘‘problems.’’4
A more recent development in makeover lifestyle television that concerns us
here in our analysis of WA$TED! is the ‘‘eco-makeover’’ program. This eco-makeover
sub-genre generally involves individuals and families engaged in the process of
adopting more environmentally sustainable changes to their everyday consumption
practices, dwellings, and lifestyles. Usually, incentives*possible prizes or cash*are
offered to motivate these changes. The participants in eco-makeover programs are
176 G. Craig

normally ordinary people but we have also seen the more generalized phenomenon of
lifestyle television where the ordinary lives of celebrities are investigated*as in the US
program The EcoZone Project. In addition to the USA, eco-makeover programs have
taken their place in the schedules in countries such as Canada (Code Green Canada),
Australia (Eco House Challenge; Carbon Cops), New Zealand (WA$TED!), and the UK
(It’s Not Easy Being Green). Eco-makeover programs (and more generalized green
lifestyle television shows) are emblematic texts that offer insights into emerging
enactments of individual agency and civic culture, within the contexts of capitalistic
commodity culture, that derive from the ethical and affective potential of contempor-
ary lifestyles. There is a paradoxical quality to eco-makeover programs: the sub-genre is
defined by its challenge of the unsustainable lifestyles of contemporary consumers but
it also remains a commercial product and it usually frames environmental change
within the contexts of the existing lifestyles of the program participants.
More broadly, eco-makeover programs provoke the kind of questions about the
value of consumption that have been debated in the literature on forms of ethical
consumption, such as Fair Trade (Goodman, 2004; Johnston, 2002). Types of ethical
consumption have been critiqued because of their marginal status and effect in the
overwhelming contexts of global capitalism and there is also a more generalized
distrust of consumption per se. Alternatively, there is a growing acknowledgment of
the political effects that are realized through the agency of consumption, manifested
in a range of subject areas from lifestyle media, social movements, and political
communication (Bell & Hollows, 2005; Corner & Pels, 2003; Parkins & Craig, 2006).

WA$TED!
WA$TED! is a half-hour program that involves an environmental audit of selected
New Zealand families and demonstrates how they could save money by minimizing
their energy use and reducing their ‘‘carbon’’ or ‘‘household’’ footprint.5 The
program, screened initially in 2007, has been successful: the first of the two series so
far attracted a cumulative total of three million viewers in New Zealand, which was
enough to place it in the TV3 network’s top five programs. The show has been
screened in countries such as the Canada, Finland, and Israel and producers in the
USA, Spain, and Denmark have purchased the concept in order to make local
versions. WA$TED! has been critically acclaimed with a number of awards, including
New Zealand’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s Energywise Award
and ‘‘Best Observational Format’’ at the MIPCOM television festival in Cannes
(Ministry for the Environment, 2007). Appropriately enough, the production of the
program was environmentally friendly and certified ‘‘carboNZero’’ by the govern-
mental authority, Landcare Research (Greening the Screen, n.d).6 The program
producers emphasized the importance of making an accessible, entertaining program
that would reach mainstream viewers who might not have been previously conscious
about environmental issues (Barnett, 2007).
As is often the case with such programs, WA$TED! employs a regular narrative
structure. An opening credit sequence features cartoon-like people, engaged in
 Everyday Epiphanies 177

non-environmentally friendly practices, who are overseen by the program hosts in an

almost puppeteer-like manner, shaking their heads and wagging their fingers at the
people below. A change of environmental practices then occurs*rubbish is taken
away, gas-guzzling cars disappear*and the hosts beam with approval and the
people celebrate. The program starts with the hosts*Francesca Price and Tristan
Glendinning*arriving at the home of the featured family and returning the products
of environmental crimes, often by dumping a huge amount of rubbish at the feet of the
family. Each episode canvasses a range of environmental practices while also focusing
on a particular environmental crime for each featured family: one family, for example,
is indicted for their use of disposable diapers and has six months of their garbage*117
bags*dumped on their driveway; another family have their house wrapped in plastic
cling-film. This spectacle of the return of the rubbish in such large amounts provokes
expressions of shock, horror, and disgust from the featured families. The families are
represented as ‘‘eco-criminals’’ and each individual is shot against a mug-shot
background. Price challenges the families to implement a range of home and lifestyle
eco-friendly changes that will save them money and she offers to match the amount of
savings they achieve. The overall energy use of the family is calculated by an eco-
calculator and represented by the number of times their carbon footprint exceeds the
actual block size of their property. The program hosts assist the families by making
changes to the house, such as bringing in environmentally friendly appliances or
installing insulation. The program then proceeds to chart the daily lifestyles of the
families*sometimes through the use of hidden cameras and other forms of
surveillance*before Price returns to announce the results of the environmental audit.
Expressions of shame are expressed over failures and celebrations occur about
successful changes before the overall reduction in energy use is announced through
the reduction in the family’s carbon footprint and the level of savings they have
achieved. The program finishes with the spectacle of families grabbing the cash they
have received and confirming their changed ways to the camera.
WA$TED! could be subject to a range of readings and critiques. First, the
enticement of cash for environmental responsibility and the introduction of new
appliances and commodities into everyday lives can be presented as evidence that the
program reproduces, rather than fundamentally challenges, contemporary consumer
culture. The discourse of environmentalism sometimes seems overwhelmed by a
more materialistic value system in WA$TED! and this is signaled in the use of
the dollar sign in the program’s title. The name of the show suggests a welcome
confluence between the reduction of wasteful environmental practices and the
ensuing monetary benefits and it could be argued that such a linkage undermines any
potential of the program to provide a substantial critique of consumer culture. This
argument is sometimes manifested in the responses of participants who obviously
only value environmental change for the savings that could ensue, although it must
be said that most people do seem genuinely moved by their new environmental
consciousness. Second, the program hosts assume an overtly pedagogical style of
presentation and there are primarily disciplinary representations of the families.
From the opening credits onwards, the hosts ‘‘oversee’’ the environmental practices of
178 G. Craig

the families and while strictures are offered in a friendly manner, Price also adopts
something of a ‘‘school teacher’’ tone as the hosts engage in the management of the
families. While the labeling of families as ‘‘eco-criminals’’ is done in a light-hearted
way, it nonetheless explicitly positions them as profligate subjects who subsequently
assume the agency of environmental responsibility only because of the guidance and
advice of the hosts. This, in turn, raises the issue of viewer responses to the
representations of the families. The pleasures of the text could well derive from
learning about environmental sustainability and observing the transformations of the
families although the equally obvious environmental ignorance of the families also
offers a subject position of superiority for more ecologically literate viewers. Third,
the program is an example of the neo-liberal trend where the burden of
environmental responsibility is shifted onto individuals and families. As will be
discussed, the program does not present the families as atomistic entities but
nonetheless as a lifestyle media text the interconnections between the families and
broader community, governmental and regulatory contexts are not foregrounded.
Fourth, there is a generally conservative portrayal of family structures, gender roles,
and home life. It should be noted, however, that while conventional nuclear families
and gender roles are most commonly presented, the program does over the two series
portray a variety of family forms along lines of class, ethnicity, and occupation*
including a single mother, a Maori family, a student household, and a farmer family.
The focus here, however, is on the significance of the moments of revelation, or
epiphanies, that are so central to makeover programs. While it is the nature of
epiphanies that they focus on a particular moment*the sense of surprise, the
revelation of the new*it will be considered here how it is that such revelations are
based upon the insertion of selves into new networks of relations that work to
produce the new self and enable the moment of revelation. It will be suggested that
the progressive political potential of WA$TED! resides in the way that the revelations
make visible previously concealed linkages between individual families, their everyday
objects and practices, and the broader social and environmental domain.
In WA$TED! there is a reveal at the end of the show when Price discloses how
much money the family has saved on an annual basis and the family greedily dives
into the bucket, but arguably the program has more multiple revelations throughout
the episode than conventional makeover television, and, more specifically, the
revelations highlight not only the networks of expertise but the networks that the
family has with their garbage, their household appliances, their council recycling
systems, and the national and global environments. Early in each episode of
WA$TED! there is the spectacle of the family’s rubbish being dumped before them
with accompanying expressions of surprise, disgust and outrage. In a way this serves a
similar function as in other makeover television*such as What Not to Wear*where
there is an investigation of the contents of a wardrobe and most of the clothes are
thrown away. Here, however, the familiar is transformed into something strange and
threatening as the sheer size of the accumulated garbage, as well as its presentation as
a rotting, coagulated mess, returns to confront the family. In response, the families
usually make statements about their ignorance of the ramifications of their rubbish
 Everyday Epiphanies 179

disposal and this extends throughout the program as it is revealed how their incorrect
usage of appliances, for example, is expending excess electricity, wasting them money,
and damaging the environment.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

I want to draw on the body of theory7 known as ANT that is articulated in the work
of Michel Callon (1986), Bruno Latour (2005), and John Law (2003, 2009) and others
in order to explore the significance of the ways that the featured WA$TED! families
learn to see the stuff of their everyday life in a new way that highlights the
connections between individuals, objects, and the broader social and environmental
contexts. ANT essentially involves shifting our systemic understandings of the social to
a networked understanding of the social. As Latour (2005, p. 7) writes: ‘‘I am going to
define the social not as a special domain, a specific realm, or a particular sort of thing,
but only as a very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling.’’ ANT
analyzes seek to highlight the networks of connections, and the agency that informs
those connections, between humans, technologies, objects, and social practices and it
reveals how the power of such networks is realized through their scale, length, and
stability.
ANT eschews deterministic accounts of the social and insists that the social ‘‘is
nothing other than patterned networks of heterogeneous materials’’ (Law, 2003).
Such an approach avoids seeing corporations, governments, institutions, and other
social ‘‘structures’’ as closed, monolithic entities, while also providing the means to
engage in a deconstructive analysis of the intricate and extended tapestry of networks
that constitute such entities and provide them with their apparent permanence and
power. ANT argues that the apparent strength and unity of entities and objects, from
corporations through to everyday technologies, such as a television, derives from a
process of ‘‘punctualization’’ whereby the networks that inform such entities and
objects are regularized, rendered invisible, and taken for granted, although they are
also always potentially precarious, open to resistance and possible failure.
ANT controversially attributes agency to non-humans (the term actants is used to
refer to human and non-human actors) although importantly this claim sharpens our
focus on the nature of human agency and the extent to which human agency is
facilitated by a range of technologies and material objects. As Law (2003) states
‘‘social agents are never located in bodies and bodies alone, but rather . . . an actor is
a patterned network of heterogeneous relations, or an effect produced by such a
network.’’ The establishment of networks is captured in the concept of ‘‘translation’’
whereby actors delineate a particular problem, engage and enroll other actors and
ensure that actors properly represent the collectivities and interests mobilized
through them (Van Loon, 2002, p. 51).
ANT has been the subject of a number of criticisms8 but the purpose here is simply
to invoke ANT in order to highlight a networked understanding of the changes that
occur to the participants in WA$TED! ANT is a useful methodological approach to
elucidate the complexity and functions of more general environmental networks9 and
180 G. Craig

specifically in eco-makeover television it enables us to chart the transformation of

individuals and families at the hands of a range of experts, as well as the functions of
material objects in such changes. As has already been noted, a Foucauldian or neo-
Foucauldian perspective can also usefully account for the exercise of expertise and the
cultivation of appropriate citizenry behavior through the contexts of social freedoms
and previous research on lifestyle television has been well served by such a theoretical
perspective. That said, it has been noted that the potential offered for more fine-
grained analysis has not been often realized by such a Foucauldian or neo-
Foucauldian perspective. In his incorporation of ANT in his study of museums,
Bennett (2004, p. 6) has declared:
[I]f the impetus of Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian scholarship has encouraged
the development of an analytic gaze which looks closely at the ‘‘microphysics of
power’’ . . . it has often proved less adept at undertaking such detailed, close-up
inspection than other intellectual traditions which share a sense of the importance
of the mundane particularities of technical arrangements and processes.
Similarly, in her ANT analysis of public service broadcasting, Jacka (2007, p. 64) has
observed that ‘‘governmentality theory often seems to yield analyses which smack of
seeing the micro-social as an effect of, or a metonym of, the macro-social, usually
characterised by neo-liberalism,’’ and that in such analyzes ‘‘there seems to be no
room for the contingency or reversals that is a constant feature of a Latourean
analysis.’’ ANT, then, is offered here as the preferred methodological approach
because of its ability to bring forth from a close analysis the constitutive significance
of the environmental networks in WA$TED! that involve the complex interaction
between human participants, technologies, objects, and practices. Equally, the more
empirical orientation of ANT facilitates a greater openness to a variety of evaluations
of the working through of environmental networks, with varying political
consequences.

WA$TED! Analysis
The analysis here will focus on the opening scenes of two episodes of the second series
of WA$TED! In the first episode, the program features two athletic, single brothers
who are featured primarily because of their extravagant use of bottled water and also
their consumption of single-serve energy bars, the wrappings of which they throw
away on the street as they exercise, either on their bikes or while they are running.
The second episode features a more conventional nuclear family that is creating three
times more carbon dioxide emissions than an average family size due to their
extravagant consumer lifestyle that includes three cars, a truck, a motorboat, spa and
pool, multiple televisions, and four freezers. These two episodes have been selected
for analysis because the featured environmental networks are clearly delineated but
equally the episodes also present typical types of environmental scenarios,
participants, and engagements between program hosts and families. As already
noted, the opening scenes of the episodes are scrutinized because it is there that the
 Everyday Epiphanies 181

epiphanies regarding the implication of participants in their existing environmental

networks are revealed and it is acknowledged that such a focus is at the expense of a
sharper investigation of the linkages that are also established in the program between
environmental stewardship and financial reward that are highlighted in the final
revelations.
The episode featuring the Reed brothers opens with a truck delivering 5,200 empty
plastic water bottles, representing their consumption over the past 10 years. The
spectacle prompts a typical response with one of the brothers stating: ‘‘I can’t believe
it.’’ Price and Glendinning then demonstrate that the wasteful consumption of water
is not limited to the water in the bottles but that 200 litres of water were used in the
making of the 40-litre bottles that the brothers consume each month. Again, there is
an expression of surprise from the brothers. In addition, Glendinning pours out the
1.5 litres of oil that is used in the production of their monthly bottle consumption. In
a typical move in WA$TED! episodes, Price then extrapolates from the level of the
individual to the global, telling the brothers that the worldwide plastic water bottle
industry uses 42 million barrels of oil in the production of bottles each year. One of
the brothers responds with the comment, ‘‘That’s crazy!’’ another comment is made:
‘‘No one told us this. Have this written on the bottle. Have it like the smoking packet.
This is what you’re doing when you’re drinking water. You would think twice about
it.’’ The focus then shifts to the brothers’ disposal of their single-serve energy fuel
plastic wrappers. Price explains the pathway of the wrappers and the consequences of
the brothers’ littering: ‘‘What happens is that the rain washes the litter down the
storm water system and out into the sea. It is now thought that plastic rubbish is
responsible for more deaths of marine life than the effects of oil spills and toxic
pollutants put together.’’ This leads to a response from one of the brothers: ‘‘Now
we’re not only using too much water but we’re also killing the dolphins.’’ A montage
of the litter moving from the street down the drains and out into the sea is then
shown. It is subsequently revealed through the eco-calculator that the brothers’
carbon footprint is 154 times the size of their property and that their carbon dioxide
emissions are 10 tons per year, double the New Zealand average.
The Beck family episode highlights the total greenhouse gas emissions of the
family. The family are initially confronted with a large balloon that contains the
amount of carbon dioxide that they are ‘‘bellowing into the atmosphere every single
day.’’ Price announces that the family has heard about greenhouse gases but they are
not doing anything about reducing their own emissions. The father comments that:
‘‘it is only in the past couple of years that you have learnt anything about it. Twenty
years ago, it didn’t really matter, people didn’t think about it.’’ The connection
between individual consumption patterns and national and global environmental
consequences is again emphasized with Price declaring that ‘‘every time they turn a
key or flick a switch they add to their already huge greenhouse gas emissions. That’s
not just melting the icecaps*it’s predicted to have an impact on New Zealand’s
landscape too with less snow cover on our mountains, more droughts in the east and
more flooding in the north.’’ The family is also presented with the bucket-load of
food scraps they produce each day. Price describes the pathway that the food scraps
182 G. Craig

travel and explains the environmental consequences, outlining that the food scraps
from the waste disposal unit go to the waste-water treatment plant before being
trucked to landfill where it is starved of oxygen and it starts to create methane, a
greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A startled looking family
is then presented with a one-kilogram balloon that represents how much carbon
dioxide their food scraps produce each day. The family are told their carbon footprint
is 24 times the size of their section and that they produce 30 tons of carbon dioxide
per year. The mother describes the experience as ‘‘a real wake-up call.’’
As these two examples attest, the epiphanies in WA$TED! are moments when
individuals ‘‘see themselves anew’’ but the novelty of the vision in these earlier
segments of the programs stems not from their transformation but from the
revelation of their existing implications in complex environmental networks involving
their home, consumption patterns, material belongings, and the broader national and
global landscapes. The program in this sense problematizes everyday life*the way the
family inhabits and uses the spatial structure of their home, how they manage the
temporality of their daily life, and how they engage with the material objects that
surround them. The program seeks to demonstrate the connections between
mundane everyday practices, such as the flick of a light switch, and the environmental
health of the planet. The program critiques the idea of the home as a ‘‘self-contained,’’
bounded site by detailing the movement of bodies, waste, and other objects from the
home to other sites, and outlining the energy and environmental costs associated
with such movement.
The revelation of the existing environmental networks of the participating families
and their insertion into new environmental networks in WA$TED! enables not only
an awareness about the relationships that individuals and families have with their
domestic appliances and material objects, and also a growing consciousness about the
environmental health of their homes, the nation and the planet. Significantly,
participation in new environmental networks also involves transformation in
individual subjectivity and the mobilization of a range of discourses that help
animate the networks. That is, the political potential of the program also arises from
the way that an environmental consciousness is conjoined with an understanding of
the importance of affect in the constitution of the place of the home, discourses of
care about self, family and quality of life, and also discourses of neighborliness and
more collective expressions of solidarity. In the Beck family episode host Price
implores the parents: ‘‘Liz and Kevin, if you want your children to have even a
fraction of the lifestyle that you guys have worked so hard to create then its absolutely
essential that you start cutting back on your greenhouse gases.’’ In another episode
the personal and social benefits of carpooling are extolled in conjunction with the
environmental benefits. In WA$TED! participation in new environmental networks
requires a more disciplined subjectivity that is motivated by an acknowledgment of a
greater moral responsibility. Ironically, given that the Reed brothers are the
‘‘embodiment’’ of physically disciplined subjects with their exercise regimes, they
are encouraged to be morally disciplined in their disposal of their energy bar
wrappers.
 Everyday Epiphanies 183

The program does not focus solely on the human participants in the show but it
also reveals the significance of mundane material objects, demonstrating both the
networks that constitute such objects and also the previously unknown complexity
and length of the networks in which such objects participate. We see this in the Reed
brothers episode with their usage of the plastic water bottles and their energy bar
wrappers. The plastic water bottles are another instance of punctualization whereby
the networks that contribute to the manufacture of the bottles are not normally
evident because the bottle appears to consumers as a fixed and immutable entity and
also because it is a regularized feature of everyday life. The program deconstructs the
very substance of the plastic water bottles, illustrating the oil, energy, and water used
in their manufacture. The plastic water bottles serve as actants in that the disclosure
of the process of their production prompts political and moral exigencies for the
brothers as they contemplate a change in their behavior. One of the brothers directly
alludes to the political and moral dilemmas that arise with the revelation of networks
when he compares the manufacture of the plastic water bottles with the health
warnings on cigarette packets that connect smoking with deleterious health effects.
Modern consumer life not only masks the complex networks of materials, energy, and
labor that go into the manufacture of everyday objects but it also conceals the
networks in which such objects continue to participate after they have been accessed,
used and discarded by human hands. We see this in the example of the energy bar
wrappers where the program visualizes the pathway the wrappers travel once they
have been thrown away and the effects such rubbish has on marine life. Such a
network orientation, then, exposes the conventional perspective of consumer culture
that posits consumption as a passive, ‘‘end-point’’ act.
Of course, WA$TED! offers not only a critique of the existing environmental
networks of participants but it also aims to fashion new more sustainable lifestyle
networks and the program hosts are primary actants in this quest. In formulating new
environmental networks the program hosts are involved in the work of translation
whereby they define the initial problem, identify and involve relevant actors, and
draw on evidence and value frameworks in order to strengthen the network. In
addition, the hosts monitor the network throughout the program as the families
engage in their new environmentally friendly practices, attending to any breakdowns
in the functioning of the network. As such, while we might focus on the epiphanies
that occur as the participants realize their involvement in existing networks, it is also
important that the new networks established are performed and that the conflicts and
teething problems are highlighted and managed.
According to ANT the power of actors does not reside in the skills and
competencies of the individual actor but in ‘‘the relationships they manage to
establish between actors and entities of various kinds’’ (Murdoch, 2006, p. 62). This
explains the significance of the hyphen in the term ‘‘actor-network’’; power is
generated through the relational alignment of actors, texts and other resources, and
objects. As Murdoch (2006, p. 62, original emphasis) states, ‘‘Power thus emerges
from within the network; it is not something imposed upon it from the outside.’’
From an ANT perspective then, the power of host Price stems from her mobilization
184 G. Craig

of other actors and her use of resources in order to facilitate the flow of the networks.
One such valuable resource is the use of statistics. Statistics are an example of
punctualization in that they are the product of a complex array of technical, scientific,
methodological, and institutional networks but they are presented as immutable facts
that can be mobilized for specific effect. Murdoch (2006, p. 82) reminds us that: ‘‘The
collection of statistics*with its technologies for classifying and enumerating*allow
civil domains to be rendered visible, calculable and, therefore, governable.’’ Statistics
play a prominent role in WA$TED!: they provide facts about the extent of historical
change in environmental practices (‘‘We’re producing three times as much rubbish as
we were 20 years ago’’); they quantify the environmental damage of featured families;
and they provide national and global environmental contexts, often allowing a point
of contrast with the individual family, in turn, working to prompt changes in the
family’s environmental practices (‘‘Your carbon dioxide emissions together are
10 tonnes a year. That’s double the New Zealand average!’’).
An analysis of the mobilization of networks in WA$TED! also provides us with an
opportunity to consider the functions of the program hosts and the makeover in eco-
makeover television within the broader contexts of makeover lifestyle television. In
WA$TED! individual episodes highlight particular themes of sustainability (in other
episodes, for example, water wastage, the burning of rubbish, and the lack of building
insulation are featured) but nonetheless the makeovers are motivated by the more
singular requirement to act in an environmentally responsible manner in order to save
the planet. In this way, WA$TED! and other eco-makeover television programs
represent a deviation from the kind of historical evolution in lifestyle television that was
noted earlier where a more didactic form of expertise proffering ‘‘correct’’ knowledge
and skills has given way to more individualistic and pluralistic modes of engagement
with the subject of the program. While the participants in WA$TED! are still positioned
as consumers, the ethical basis of their consumption gives a greater uniformity to their
behavioral outcomes than other lifestyle television where individuals can adopt
fashion, cooking, gardening, and other lifestyle practices to express and enhance their
sense of individuality. Of course, such expressions of ‘‘individuality’’ are still informed
by particular aesthetics and value systems but the purpose in these other programs is
primarily to enhance consumer choice from a repertoire of lifestyle options rather than
to ‘‘seek to encourage a single lifestyle’’ (Taylor, 2002, p. 488).
It is this more singular orientation of WA$TED! that helps inform the overtly
interventionist and pedagogical manner of the program hosts. More so than other
lifestyle television, eco-makeover television has an educational remit and as such the
program hosts are active in mobilizing program participants into new environmental
networks. A variety of strategies are deployed in order to realize greater environmental
sustainability from the featured families. As already noted, shame and humiliation are
used in WA$TED! episodes through the labeling of families as ‘‘eco-criminals.’’ The
program narrative involves Price establishing the environmentally profligate lifestyles
of the featured families in the initial segments of the episodes*she tells the Reed
brothers that ‘‘It’s time to put a lid on your wasteful ways’’*and then recalcitrant
participants are castigated when they fail to implement the desired practices*in one
 Everyday Epiphanies 185

episode the father of the family is told, ‘‘you didn’t take a word of my advice when it
came to the spa pool and the car pooling’’ and ‘‘I can’t even believe that you are trying
to defend yourself.’’ That said, the eco-makeovers in WA$TED! are not solely generated
through such disciplinary strictures. A significant feature of the program is the
pleasures that are expressed as the families insert themselves into new environmental
networks that involve new spatial and temporal dynamics in their everyday life*such
as less stress from taking public transport to work*and also renewed relationships
with each other and the local and global community. The program hosts are equally
influential here, encouraging families, sympathizing with their struggles and
congratulating them on their successes. To make such a point is to highlight the
transformative process in eco-makeovers: the initial epiphanies that have been the
subject of scrutiny here, that occur in the early segments of the episodes, are further
developed into behavioral changes by the motivation of such ethical pleasures.

Conclusion
Green lifestyle television programs are important sites of environmental commu-
nication that reveal the contradictions, tensions, and political possibilities that arise
from particular negotiations of environmental sustainability in the contexts of
modern consumer culture. Green lifestyle television highlights how contemporary
lifestyles can be complex expressions of identity that have the potential to establish
new modes of environmental, civic, and political engagement rather than just
reinforce self and commodity-obsessed behavior. The emergence of the sub-genre of
eco-makeover television in particular provides us with illustrations of the kinds of
lifestyle changes that individuals and families can initiate as they seek to become
more environmentally sustainable subjects. The makeovers that inform such
programs provide narratives where we see people become aware of the environmental
costs associated with their existing behavior, struggle to implement changes to their
lifestyles, and derive ethical pleasures when such changes are successfully introduced
into their daily lives.
Environmental sustainability is generally informed by a logic of connectivity and in
this sense WA$TED! follows other environmental communication strategies that seek
to reveal the complex networks that facilitate the ease of everyday existence for
privileged western subjects, highlight the environmental consequences associated
with the continuation of those networks, and attempt to change behavior through the
initiation of more environmentally sustainable networks. In WA$TED! an under-
standing of the environment is arrived at, not so much through the imposition of a
systematic understanding of sustainability, but primarily through the tracing of
environmental networks from the contexts of quotidian existence. The textual
pleasures of the makeover genre dictate that much critical attention has focused on
the revelation that occurs after the program participants have subjected themselves to
new networks of expertise. I have argued here that a significant feature of WA$TED!
also stems from the multiple revelations that are generated in the initial segments of
the programs that show how the families are implicated in existing environmental
186 G. Craig

networks that incorporate their homes, appliances, garbage, their local communities,
as well as the national and global environment. The effect of these initial epiphanies is
that the focus is less on a singular transformed individual or family and more on the
previously concealed networks and relationships that facilitate the lifestyles of the
featured families. I have introduced ANT in this analysis as an effective methodo-
logical approach that can make manifest in specific detail the complex constitution of
such environmental networks, including the agency of technologies and material
objects, and the role of the program hosts in the initial delineation of networks and
the management of subsequent reworked environmental networks. While eco-
makeover television can be differentiated from other genres of makeover television in
that the emphasis is less on individual expressions of lifestyle and more on the
realization of a singular environmental ethic, it is suggested that ANT could also be
usefully applied more generally in analyzes of makeover television given that the
phenomenon is defined by the insertion of individuals into new networks.
The emergence of the eco-makeover genre of lifestyle television, then, provides
another valuable means by which the public promotion of environmental change can
be disseminated. The interest in WA$TED! here stems from a perception that it
participates in a trend in popular culture, that extends from lifestyle television to the
burgeoning popularity of farmers’ markets, where the pleasures and the politics of
lifestyle engagement partly result in a challenge or negotiation of the networks that
sustain and continue to animate contemporary global capitalism. We should not glide
too easily over the significance of the screening of such a text in prime time viewing
to such a large mainstream audience. Despite the noted limitations of the program,
there is, I believe, something worthy of note in the everyday epiphanies of WA$TED!
where individuals are presented with a new way of living everyday life that does
actually challenge current levels of personal consumption.

Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at a seminar at the Center for
Communication & Public Engagement at the University of Washington, Seattle. My
thanks to Professor W. Lance Bennett and the Department of Communication staff
for their feedback in that seminar. As always, the responsibility for any errors or
omissions resides with the author.

Notes
[1] The concept of ‘‘epiphany’’ has origins in the Christian narrative, referring to the Adoration
of the Magi and the incarnation of the infant Christ, although its more modern and secular
understanding is often said to derive from its invocation and use in modern fiction,
particularly in the work of James Joyce (Beja, 1971). Epiphanies are often attributed with
tremendous power given their sudden and dramatic nature, although the significance of
epiphanies in cognitive change has been also questioned (Gardner, 2004). ‘‘Epiphany’’ is used
here in a general sense of a sudden revelation, although it is noted that the spiritual nature of
 Everyday Epiphanies 187

an epiphany can be distinguished from revelations that derive from more rational forms of
sudden illumination (Beja, 1971, pp. 15
16).
[2] Frances Bonner (2003, p. 32) prefers to use the term ‘‘ordinary’’ rather than ‘‘everyday’’
because her concern ‘‘is not primarily with ‘real’ people and how they make use of television
in their everyday life, but rather with the use of everyday life by television (including its
incorporation of ‘real’ people into its programmes).’’ Significantly, the agency of everyday life
is facilitated by its ordinariness: ‘‘the more or less secure normality of everyday life, and our
capacity to manage it on a daily basis’’ (Silverstone, 1994, p. 166). In his invocation of
‘‘ordinariness,’’ Silverstone distinguishes it from the ‘‘popular’’ (Fiske) and the ‘‘mediocre’’
(Lefebvre) as a way of describing everyday life, stating that the term is ‘‘both sociologically
more accurate and evaluatively less extreme’’ (Silverstone,1984, p. 183).
[3] The space of the home*its physical boundaries and organization, the social relations that
occur within it, and its emotional significance*has been the subject of wide-ranging critique
(Bachelard, 1994; Cullens, 1999; Felski, 1999
2000; Heller, 1984; Young, 1997). The home
can be a source of comfort, intimacy and security but it can also be a site of social
dislocation, exploitation, and violence.
[4] The concept of the makeover is not the invention of lifestyle television but has a long media
history in films (Now,Voyager; Funny Face; Pretty Woman) and women’s magazines and has
structured ‘‘feminine beauty culture’’ more generally (Moseley, 2000, p. 303; see also T.
Miller, 2008).
[5] The environmental audit of families involved weekly readings of electricity, gas, water and
fuel, and an analysis of the household’s rubbish. The program makers also collected all
shopping receipts, monitored the distance family members travelled each week, talked to
family members about their weekly habits, and inspected the insulation and appliances in
their home. A carbon footprint refers to the total greenhouse emissions caused by an
individual, household, organization, event or product. The household’s footprint was
calculated by measuring the household’s resource use and translating that into an actual land
size.
[6] The carboNZero program is a New Zealand based, internationally accredited greenhouse gas
certification program that provide tools and resources to help companies and organizations
measure, manage, and mitigate your greenhouse gas emissions. See http://www.carbonzero.
co.nz/index.asp for further details.
[7] It is something of a misnomer to call ANT a ‘‘theory.’’ John Law (2009, p. 141) states that
ANT is ‘‘descriptive rather than foundational in explanatory terms’’ and should be viewed
more as a methodological approach or a ‘‘toolkit’’ to account for the formation and structure
of networks.
[8] The criticisms of ANT include charges that its descriptive basis does not, in turn, yield
sufficient explanatory theoretical perspectives; that its focus on material networks does not
sufficiently account for the ongoing polysemic interpretative status of networks once
particular interpretations help facilitate the establishment of those networks (Couldry, 2004);
and that it underplays the role of cultural values in the establishment and flow of networks
(Murdoch & Miele, 2004; Parkins & Craig, 2009).
[9] This claim is supported by the way that ANT has been applied in the study of global and
alternative food networks. See, for example: Busch and Juska (1997); Whatmore and Thorne
(1997).

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