'Down to Earth with Zac Efron': Actor joins Darin Olien to explore Iceland and its renewable energy sources
In Netflix's new documentary 'Down to Earth with Zac Efron' the actor and singer along with the "guru of healthy living and superfoods" Darin Olien travel around the world in search of healthy and sustainable living solutions for the planet and all those who inhabit it. The first episode puts the focus on the Nordic island country of Iceland.
Efron and Olien make multiple stops across the country that gets 100% of its electricity from renewable sources of energy produced by heat from the perennial underground volcanic activity as well as the force from the 10,000 cascading magnificent waterfalls spread across Iceland. They start their journey in South Iceland on the Reykjanes Peninsula and head east to visit the village of Laugarvatn. Their destination is Fontana Spa, a geothermal wellness center built on the coast on the edge of the town. They meet with the managing director of the spa to experience the tradition of baking rye bread in the boiling sands.
The second spot was the bridge that separates the Eurasian and North American continents. The space between the tectonic plates of the continents is increasing at a dangerous rate every year and a bridge was built to connect the two continents. They then go to a power plant to see how all the heat that is generated from the grounds across the year is harnessed to generate electricity and power.
They also highlight the negatives that result from the process however the geologist on-site assures that the emissions are just a meager 3% of what it would have been in a power station run by fossil fuel. Olien and Efron then move to relax their muscles and indulge in some cryotherapy and thermotherapy treatment at another spa following which they head to one of the main attractions of Iceland, Gullfoss Falls.
They met an on-site ranger but couldn't get more information from him so Efron resorted to Google to find all the information he wanted to know about the magnificent waterfalls. Their next pitstop was a Michelin star restaurant where Efron tried reindeer meat and dung smoked bacon while also learning about the reindeer hunting lottery system in the country.
For the last stop, they visit the Resource Park, a collective of different companies in the Reykjanes Peninsula — all of them built on harvesting hot water and other byproducts from surrounding energy plants. Industries such as methanol, cosmetics, agriculture and even farm-raised tropical fish are a few of the businesses that are thriving in the area as a result of byproducts from the geothermal process.