Can we make greening the film industry sexy? | Little White Lies

Can we make green­ing the film indus­try sexy?

11 Apr 2025

Words by Ben Smoke

Woman with camera recording in lush, overgrown jungle setting with signage.
Woman with camera recording in lush, overgrown jungle setting with signage.
It’s not easy being green, but the Green Rid­er ini­tia­tive aims to engage Hol­ly­wood’s biggest names with mak­ing changes to film­mak­ing that could help reduce the film indus­try’s car­bon footprint.

Los Ange­les is the heart of the west­ern film indus­try. Films of vary­ing qual­i­ty have been cre­at­ed as a love let­ter to the City of Angels, nes­tled amongst the hills on the west­ern coast of the Unit­ed States. This year, in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, wild­fires that start­ed in those very hills ripped through the city, killing at least 28 peo­ple, dis­plac­ing thou­sands of res­i­dents and caus­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions in prop­er­ty damage.

The unsea­son­al infer­nos saw hun­dreds of thou­sands faced with evac­u­a­tion orders and forced the shut-down of a num­ber of pro­duc­tions includ­ing Grey’s Anato­my, Jim­my Kim­mel Live and, iron­i­cal­ly, Amazon’s post-apoc­a­lyp­tic dra­ma Fall­out. The impact of the fires was wide­ly acknowl­edged across the cre­ative indus­tries as awards shows, nom­i­na­tion and tour announce­ments were all post­poned. Those who fought the fires were hon­oured at the Gram­mys and Oscars, and a two venue ben­e­fit con­cert raised over $100 mil­lion accord­ing to organisers.

The World Weath­er Attribution’s Los Ange­les wild­fires study found that cli­mate change made the costli­est wild­fires in California’s his­to­ry more like­ly, and much more intense because of fos­sil fuel-dri­ven cli­mate change. Right­ly, much focus is being placed on the archi­tects of cli­mate change. Green­peace UK’s senior cli­mate cam­paign­er Philip Evans told Lit­tle White Lies, The big ques­tion now is who pays for the esti­mat­ed $250 bil­lion worth of dam­ages? The answer should be sim­ple – the oil and gas indus­try. These cli­mate crim­i­nals have spent decades pump­ing green­house gas­es into our atmos­phere, dri­ving the cli­mate cri­sis and cre­at­ing the con­di­tions that caused these fires to hap­pen. It’s time big pol­luters stopped drilling and start­ed pay­ing for the dev­as­ta­tion they’re causing.”

Whilst watch­ing Bey­on­cé accept her Album of the Year award from LA fire­fight­ers (who she went on to thank) was nice, it’s hard to not notice that the fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies that are alleged to have heav­i­ly con­tributed to the con­di­tions were absent from the dis­course. So too, telling­ly, was the impact of the cre­ative indus­tries on the climate.

Film and tele­vi­sion is big busi­ness – in 2018 the glob­al box office was worth $136 bil­lion. The glob­al enter­tain­ment indus­try also gen­er­ates mil­lions of met­ric tonnes of CO2 per year. Large big bud­get pro­duc­tions – the type that dom­i­nate the box office and award sea­sons alike – can emit up to 3,370 met­ric tons of CO2 equiv­a­lent. That’s the same as pow­er­ing 702 homes for one year. Of course this num­ber great­ly increas­es with the use of gen­er­a­tive AI in a film’s pro­duc­tion. Cre­at­ing one image using the tech­nol­o­gy can use as much pow­er as charg­ing your phone.

As far back as 2011, the sub­ject of the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the screen indus­try has been recog­nised by those with­in it. One such organ­i­sa­tion is BAFTA’s albert, who, accord­ing to their web­site, is a BAF­TA owned, indus­try-backed group found­ed in 2011 to sup­port the film and TV indus­try to reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of pro­duc­tion and to cre­ate con­tent that sup­ports a vision for a sus­tain­able future. The organ­i­sa­tion offers and runs online tools, train­ing events and projects with the aim of help­ing screen indus­try pro­fes­sion­als iden­ti­fy and act upon oppor­tu­ni­ties on and off screen that will lead to effec­tive cli­mate action.”

It’s from one of these projects that the Green Rid­er was born. The idea was artists using their con­tracts to nego­ti­ate for more sus­tain­able prac­tices on set.” Actor, writer and cam­paign mem­ber Danu­sia Samal says. Unfor­tu­nate­ly when Covid came along, a lot of this work got side­lined. In 2023, I was work­ing with a bril­liant net­work of cli­mate con­scious actors called Equi­ty for a Green New Deal” and want­ed to do more work around screen and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. So we picked up the idea of the green rid­er, and with BAF­TA albert’s bless­ing, began to build a cam­paign that was actor-led, ambi­tious, and collaborative.”

The cam­paign tasks screen indus­try pro­fes­sion­als with nego­ti­at­ing spe­cif­ic green claus­es – such as sus­tain­able food on set and low emis­sion trans­port options – into their con­tracts to encour­age pro­duc­tions to lessen their impact on the climate.

A person standing on a frozen lake, surrounded by bare trees and a projected image on a large screen. The image shows a serene, winter landscape.

Our launch at the Edin­burgh TV fes­ti­val was a great suc­cess. Around 200 actors signed our open let­ter (includ­ing Paa­pa Essiedu, Bill Nighy and Gem­ma Arter­ton). And we received lots of great press,” Samal says. Since then, we’ve tri­alled the Green Rid­er on five TV shows and three films. All the pro­duc­tions made sig­nif­i­cant wins around emis­sion reduc­tion, and big­ger cul­tur­al changes around how green’ mea­sures are viewed on set.”

Endorse­ments from actors includ­ing Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, col­lab­o­ra­tions in the US and beyond, and the receipt of fund­ing to expand their work has seen the cam­paign trans­form into a long term, sus­tain­able endeav­our to green the indus­try. Here in the UK cam­paign­ers have worked along­side per­form­ers union Equi­ty to nego­ti­ate a Green Rid­er into their col­lec­tive agree­ments with PACT (the UK screen sec­tor trade body for inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion companies).

The trans­for­ma­tive work of the Green Rid­er attract­ed the atten­tion of cli­mate activist and advo­cate Issey Glad­ston who runs the pod­cast How to Make Cli­mate Change Sexy’. The tagline for this project is serv­ing c*nt in a time of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis,” Glad­ston says over email. I want­ed to cre­ate a space that infused cli­mate con­ver­sa­tions with a bit of humour – some­thing that cuts through the often over­ly earnest, doom-laden tone of envi­ron­men­tal dis­course. A lot of cli­mate cov­er­age feels like it’s com­ing from the same angle, speak­ing to the same audi­ence. But what about those who don’t iden­ti­fy with the crunchy gra­nola” image of a cli­mate advocate?”

The project, which includes a pod­cast and a pop­u­lar meme Insta­gram page, saw its first pub­lic out­ing ear­li­er this year in the shape of a live pod­cast record­ing and screen­ing of Spir­it of Place which imple­ment­ed the Green Rid­er dur­ing its pro­duc­tion. The short film, star­ring Mark Rylance and direct­ed by Jack Coop­er Stimp­son, is a beau­ti­ful medi­a­tion on con­nec­tion and nature, shot entire­ly in Wood­ber­ry Wet­lands in north London.

The screen­ing came about because Jack reached out to me as he’d seen the meme page and liked the vibe of the project and this was before sea­son two of the pod­cast came out! I liked the work he was putting out in the film world as it also felt a bit more unex­pect­ed and less like cli­mate apoc­a­lypse porn so we decid­ed to co-host this event.”

Before set­ting up the screen­ing, Glad­ston had not con­sid­ered the envi­ron­men­tal impact of film­mak­ing: I imag­ine that’s true for many film lovers. We’re often encour­aged to think about sus­tain­abil­i­ty in terms of food, trav­el, or fash­ion, but we rarely stop to con­sid­er the foot­print of the films we watch.”

Green­ing cin­e­ma is no easy task. As with any mono­lith­ic indus­try there is resis­tance to change – par­tic­u­lar­ly if that change is being read as com­ing with increased cost or as impact­ing cre­ative choic­es. A cam­paign like the Green Rid­er, which focus­es on util­is­ing the bar­gain­ing pow­er of, par­tic­u­lar­ly, actors, in a tra­di­tion­al­ly pre­car­i­ous indus­try. That being said, as Issey, Danu­sia and the oth­er guests on the live pod­cast right­ly point­ed out, the indus­try is no stranger to sweep­ing, rad­i­cal change in short spaces of time. Just ten years ago, the inclu­sion of inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors as a grow­ing stan­dard on set seemed unthinkable.

Whilst the focus of the Green Rid­er cam­paign is on encour­ag­ing big stu­dios and gov­ern­ments to enact change and invest in the sort of infra­struc­ture that will make green­ing cin­e­ma eas­i­er, the role of cin­e­ma lovers in sup­port­ing it can­not be under­stat­ed. I think show­ing enthu­si­asm and sup­port for projects that have been filmed in a green­er way, or actors that make green­er choic­es will help show the indus­try that audi­ences care about this issue.” Samal says.

For Glad­ston, who has set her­self the unen­vi­able task of try­ing to sex up cli­mate change, audi­ences are inte­gral to the mis­sion of green­ing an indus­try increas­ing­ly being affect­ed by cli­mate break­down. By sup­port­ing actors who adopt the Green Rid­er, we can send a clear mes­sage to agents and stu­dios that sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just eth­i­cal­ly impor­tant, but also a rep­u­ta­tion­al win for those involved, encour­ag­ing more peo­ple to sign up,” she argues. If enough actors get on board, it cre­ates a rip­ple effect — push­ing stu­dios and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to make mean­ing­ful changes in response to indus­try and pub­lic demand.”

There are many that wor­ry that the Jan­u­ary wild­fires – unprece­dent­ed as they were in both scale and sea­son – were sim­ply a warm up act for what’s to come. It’s clear the work of green­ing all parts of our soci­ety, includ­ing the enter­tain­ment indus­try, is vital to our sur­vival. The work of the Green Rid­er cam­paign, along with pod­casts like How to Make Cli­mate Change Sexy’ is an inte­gral part of the solution.

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