How green film­mak­ing is dri­ving sus­tain­abil­i­ty in cinema

In 2021, the glob­al film indus­try was esti­mat­ed to be worth $42.5 bil­lion, and is expect­ed to expe­ri­ence a com­pound annu­al growth rate (CAGR) of 8.3 per cent between 2021 and 2027. With ris­ing sea lev­els and the amount of CO2 in the atmos­phere reach­ing increas­ing­ly wor­ry­ing heights, one could won­der then, how sus­tain­abil­i­ty could fit with such a rapid­ly expand­ing industry?

In Lon­don alone, film pro­duc­tion pro­duced the same amount of CO2 as a town of 20,000 peo­ple dur­ing 2018, and in 2021 it was esti­mat­ed that, on aver­age, a film with a bud­get of more than $70m gen­er­ates 2,840 tonnes of CO2. Mak­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty seem like an after­thought with­in film.

Some progress has been made, with Pinewood Stu­dios in Slough putting on a free shut­tle bus ser­vice to and from local train and under­ground sta­tions to help vis­i­tors cut down on car use, and 100 per cent of the elec­tric­i­ty sourced by the stu­dio pur­chased from renew­able sources. The Vec­tar Project stu­dio in Stock­port even offers sets made entire­ly from cardboard.

In 2019 Sam Mendes’ 1917 became the first British fea­ture film of its scale to gain an Albert cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, mean­ing they fol­lowed a car­bon action plan to reduce their car­bon emis­sions. This high-pro­file achieve­ment has paved the way for the Hol­ly­wood mega mon­ster (or mega dinosaur) flick Juras­sic World: Domin­ion, which is fol­low­ing suit. Albert also has a car­bon cal­cu­la­tor that is free to use for all pro­duc­tions. While a step in the right direc­tion, is this enough to tack­le such a vast and wor­ry­ing glob­al issue?

Lau­ra Toren­beek is an award-win­ning film­mak­er liv­ing and work­ing in the North of Eng­land. Pas­sion­ate about the envi­ron­ment and green film­mak­ing, she has her heart set on car­bon neu­tral­i­ty in film. In 2019, she found­ed Green Film Pro­duc­tions. We spoke to her recent­ly about sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the film indus­try, and what changes can be put in place to help films be more envi­ron­men­tal­ly aware.

LWLies: What is green filmmaking?

Toren­beek: Mak­ing films in a sus­tain­able way across all aspects of the pro­duc­tion process. A cou­ple of years ago, it real­ly start­ed to pick up, with com­pa­nies like Earth Angel pro­vid­ing Green Mar­shalls on film sets, and com­pa­nies offer­ing sus­tain­able prod­uct place­ment instead of mass mar­ket­ing adver­tis­ing. Film­mak­ing can be real­ly waste­ful with things only being used once or twice. It’s impor­tant to change that as well as people’s mindsets.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about Green Film Productions?

The idea was to empow­er under-rep­re­sent­ed groups and voic­es. Then, because at that time I was learn­ing about green film­mak­ing, I thought ​‘If I set up this com­pa­ny, I have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of tak­ing care of our plan­et in the process.’ As well as using sus­tain­able tech­niques, I incor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into the actu­al nar­ra­tives when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Of course, it depends on what kind of project you make. It might be weird if you just sud­den­ly start talk­ing about sus­tain­abil­i­ty but I think in most films you can def­i­nite­ly put some­thing in.

Addi­tion­al­ly, I put things in place like plant­i­ng a tree for each pro­duc­tion, which is rel­a­tive­ly small, but I want to car­bon off­set every­thing we do. I’m work­ing with the Albert Ini­tia­tive to cal­cu­late our emis­sions. So far the pro­duc­tions have been quite low-key, with small crews and not much trav­el, so we haven’t had many, but the idea is to make every­thing car­bon neu­tral. Also, I have been look­ing into ways of recy­cling what we use. I’m work­ing with a Covid team on a pro­duc­tion at the moment, every­thing used to get thrown away, but then I found a com­pa­ny called Reworked, who can recy­cle all your PPE into furniture.

There’s a dif­fer­ence between low- and high-bud­get film­mak­ing. Which of these lends itself bet­ter to sustainability?

The big one would be the small­er num­ber of peo­ple that are involved in inde­pen­dent films com­pared to the big stu­dio pro­duc­tions. The stu­dio films will nat­u­ral­ly use more resources, but at the same time, they will have the mon­ey to employ sus­tain­able prac­tices. On the flip side to that, with inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing, you can be forced to be more resource­ful to save money.

Doing things sus­tain­ably doesn’t have to be more expen­sive, if you plan ahead. As well as being bet­ter for the envi­ron­ment, it can be bet­ter for your bud­get. On the down side, though, you might not have enough mon­ey to hire a green stew­ard on set for instance, so there are pros and cons. I per­son­al­ly think that every pro­duc­tion should have some­one who is sole­ly focused on the envi­ron­men­tal aspect of the film, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty should be made part of the pro­to­cols that peo­ple have to follow.

We have seen a rise in online work­ing over the last few years. How much of that can trans­late to the film industry?

There is quite a lot, espe­cial­ly in pre-pro­duc­tion. These days you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to have a meet­ing in per­son. Post-pro­duc­tion can also be from a dis­tance although it’s not ide­al. Of course, for dra­mas at least, the actu­al shoot has to be in per­son, but before and after there is no rea­son why you can’t work remote­ly. I’m hop­ing it will stay, not just in film, but in gen­er­al as well.

Do you have any advice for any­one who wants to incor­po­rate green prac­tices into their own films?

Don’t try and rein­vent the wheel, there is so much infor­ma­tion already out there around green film­mak­ing. Also, make sure you get every­one who is involved with the pro­duc­tion on board, that’s real­ly impor­tant. Final­ly, think cre­ative­ly. It might sound bor­ing, but you can come up with real­ly fun and cre­ative solutions.

In the fight against cli­mate change, what part will the arts play?

Peo­ple learn and digest a lot of infor­ma­tion through the arts. Art gives us infor­ma­tion in a way that’s inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing, but at the same time makes us think. One exam­ple would be the film Don’t Look Up. There’s con­tent every­where with so many plat­forms and ways of spread­ing infor­ma­tion. Art and sto­ry­telling will be essen­tial. I just hope that we keep sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a big part of it, and we don’t for­get the impor­tance of it.

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