I’ve been enjoying the new series “Living with Ed” on HGTV starring actor Ed Begley, Jr, and his wife Rachelle Carson. Ed goes to near extremes along his path of earth friendly conservation, but the show has a very endearing quality and has also featured some good uses for old things.

In a previous episode, Ed visited Jay Leno and his classic automobile collection. To my knowledge this is the first time Jay’s facility, in which he stores his classic cars, has been shown in any kind of depth on television. It’s impressive to see that Jay has many “experimental” automobiles from early on in it’s industry such as the electric “women’s shopping car” and a steam / gas engine hybrid. When you hear of Jay’s famous collection of cars, you usually just hear of the hot rods. However, Jay has quite a few more antiquated models, some of which feature uncommon means of propulsion by today’s standards.

My personal favorite thing in this segment wasn’t a automobile at all, but the huge old steam powered engine that Jay has set up in his auto warehouse. Apparently, it’s still in working order and you can see Ed and Jay turning the massive wheel to it here on the right hand picture. I don’t know where Jay found it, but I commend him for giving it a place of honor instead of letting it end up in some scrap yard. Interestingly enough, Jay does have a active interest in alternative energy. He plans to set up a solar panel array on top of his car storage building to generate his own local power and is even working on his own bio diesel hot rod.

In the most recent episode, Ed and Rachelle begin renovating their kitchen with a new counter top. While Ed’s personal fear is that the old counter top is just going to go into a landfill, their choice of a new counter top replacement uses materials that might have come out of one. Specifically, a countertop made out of old broken glass and manufactured by a company called Vetrazzo.

Rachelle’s choice comes down to a surface comprised of either glass from cobalt blue bottles or one comprised of old soda bottles. Ultimately, she chooses the green surface comprised of the soda bottle glass and makes a nostalgic remark about drinking a lot of soda out of those bottles when she was a kid.

I had never heard of such a product for a counter top surface (it can be used for floors as well) and I have to admit it intrigued me. I also fondly remember drinking soda out of glass bottles as a kid and although I’d still rather be drinking soda out of glass bottles today, the idea of recycling the old bottles into something useful like this is pretty neat.

Unfortunately, Vetrazzo’s products seem to be rather limited to the state of California according to their current retailer page. Hopefully we see more of it in the future. Not only is it a great use of (presumably) discarded old glass, but it looks fantastic too.

Living With Ed has been fun to watch and only being a 6 episode season, it’s all ready half over. You might not want to live with Ed, or even live like Ed, but I think we could all learn one or two things from watching him.

Living With Ed airs new episodes Sunday nights on HGTV.