Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson is planning to team up with American environmental crusader Erin Brockovich - the real life woman who inspired the Julia Roberts hit movie of the same name - to make television public service announcements as part of his campaign to educate Americans about the need to preserve their environment.
Richardson, who recently launched his own environmental lobby group, Just Within Reach: An Earth Foundation, says he may also team up with America's National Geographic Society to produce an educational video for schoolchildren.
Erin Brockovich led a residents' legal battle against the Pacific Gas and Electric company in California against the unauthorised disposal of the company's toxic waste. She claimed the pollution had caused everything from uterine and breast cancer to birth defects, miscarriages and immune disorders in the community of Hinkley. Under pressure from Brockovich the company paid out more than $333 million to settle the case.
Kevin has said that he set up the foundation because of his iron industry worker father's premature death, aged 49 from cancer in 1991 and more recently last October his home state of Kentucky suffered America's largest spill from coal mining when more than 250 million gallons of 'black water' spilled from a coal waste storage area in Martin County into people's lawns covering them in sludge. Richardson, who got married last June and recently bought a farm near Lexington, Kentucky, said he's concerned about the kind of environment his generation will leave their children.