For Miriam Nielsen, making videos on her YouTube channel, ZenTouro, is compulsive. An environmental issue will grab her attention—the pointlessness of plastic bottles or a gas leak in California—and within 24 hours she’ll have scripted, recorded, and edited a short video about it.

Her videos are designed to inform and entertain—sophisticated graphics and news clips supplement over-caffeinated rants on topics ranging from why the fast fashion industry is evil ("We're throwing away a fifth grader worth of clothes every single year!”) to who’s to blame for the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. She’s brainy, but never boring, and bounces easily between serious and lighthearted subjects without missing a beat.

But Nielsen is working in relatively uncharted territory. “There’s a big section of the Internet that promotes vegan environmentalism, which a lot of people find very abrasive,” she explains. “And then there’s the other side of the Internet that includes Grist and the Sierra Club and other organizations that have a great web presence, but it’s mostly written content.”

What’s missing, according to Nielsen? Multimedia environmental activism that is grounded in social networking.

The eco-minded YouTuber is doing her part to fill this gap. Her channel has over 1,000 subscribers, and feedback from viewers shows that her videos are helping raise awareness about environmental issues.

“I get a lot of comments from people who say they didn’t know about a certain topic until I covered it,” says Nielsen. “Some say that they’ve actually changed some of their habits because of my videos.”