Nickelodeon's Big Green Help

Nickelodeon is currently in the midst of a public service campaign called The Big Green Help. The purpose of this series of PSAs is to encourage young people to act responsibly by recycling and precycling and minimizing their energy and resource use:

"at home, at school, at the mall".

(Sound of brakes screeching in the background) Huh? At home - good. At school - great. At the MALL?

I am unclear as to how young people are supposed to exhibit their growing sense of environmental stewardship at a location that is expressly purposed to get them to buy stuff they probably don't need. By eating at the food court, dining on feedlot-bred hamburgers that were raised on denuded rain forest and shipped halfway across the globe, served on single-use plates/cups/forks/napkins? By purchasing clothing made of chemical-laden fabrics, likely sewn by underpaid young women, perhaps working in a sweatshop, that was again shipped halfway across the globe, each garment in it's own individual plastic wrapping? By asking their parents to drive them to the mall to "hang out" with their friends - because for all the talk about biking or walking instead of driving, I live in New Jersey, the mall capital of the world, and I have yet to see a mall that is within walking distance of a residential area, never mind in a location that is safe to walk to (though public transportation is sometimes an option)?

I realize that the idea of minimizing consumption in the current economic climate is controversial. For everyone who buys less, someone who works in manufacturing, retail, transportation, or related industries is at risk of losing her job. However, I refuse to accept that we are unable to come up with a new, sustainable paradigm that does not rely on stripping resources and filling our planet with trash in order to put food on tables and roofs over heads. Especially when we are talking to the young, who are the future and who are creative and intelligent, we should be encouraging them to find a new way rather than expecting them to continue in the old.