There are so many TV shows out there — and I’ve never even heard of most of them. That’s what I realized at the Environmental Media Association awards ceremony at The Ebell on Thursday, when films, TV shows, companies, and individuals raising environmental consciousness were recognized.

A show called Handy Manny won the Children’s Live Action / Animation award, for example. Perhaps I’d never heard of that show just because I’m happily child-free — but the winner in the Reality Programming category, Mobile Home Disaster, was also new to me. In his acceptance speech, the guy from the show led with this: “You have no idea who we are, do you?” Everyone laughed, semi-nervously.

Some of my favorite shows won too though. Tina Fey won big, with 30 Rock taking the Television Episodic Comedy award and Baby Mama getting a nomination for the Feature Film category. The biggest winner of all? Al Gore, whose An Inconvenient Truth was mentioned in what seemed like every other clip of the nominated shows. Of the four shows nominated in the Television Episodic Comedy, An Inconvenient Truth was mentioned in two, and Al Gore himself made a guest appearance in a third (30 Rock). Hollywood’s been Gore-d.

Rosario Dawson got the Futures Award for her efforts to encourage cellphone recycling, her involvement with Live Earth, and other eco-related work. Other TV winners included CNN’s Planet in Peril in the Documentary category and Boston Legal in the Television Episodic Drama.

Two slightly odd award recipients were The Philadelphia Eagles and Tiffany & Co. — companies whose relationship to the TV and film industry seem tenuous at best. Their awards were called the EMA Board of Directors Ongoing Commitment Award and the EMA Corporate Responsibility Award, respectively. Both winners certainly did undertake some impressive eco-initiatives, but why sports teams and jewelry companies are honored at this particular award show is a mystery to me.

Overall, the show ran rather long — partly because both the Eagles and Tiffany got to play a long infomercial-esque videos about their companies, followed up by acceptance speeches by representatives from each company — and partly because the major sponsor, Toyota, got a lot of stage time to both play an infomercial AND give a longish speech about its eco-initiatives.

Still, the evening was a fun one, emceed by Jeffrey Tambor with lots of eco-minded celebrities like Amy Smart and Ed Begley, Jr. giving out awards. Afterward was a dinner and afterparty, where the many environmentally-minded restaurants serving food went strangely meat-heavy, leaving pescatarians like me sipping too much Bonterra organic wine and circling Real Food Daily‘s table.

The least eco aspect of the night wasn’t the red meat though (which, to the restaurants’ credit, was mostly organic). That honor went to the water in one-serving TetraPak containers, handed to guests as they entered The Ebell.

This difficult-to-recycle, unnecessarily packaged water was especially annoying because EMA’s previous Green for Good event made a point of eschewing packaged water — because that event was sponsored by PUR. Let’s hope the EMA can find less trash-intensive sponsors for the 2009 ceremony.

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