Environmentally Friendly Production Sets
Posted January 10th, 2012 by LouThis is the year that we move forward in significant strides to make the productions industries more environmentally aware. In all the years, um, decades that I’ve been around photography and movie production I have seen a lot of waste. I understand completely that convenience rules on the set and that all those individually packaged waters and snacks and things are almost necessary.
But I think we can do better. And to that end, starting this year were dedicating a monthly email to tips of running an environmentally friendly set.
So if you’re not yet, get on our email list. It’s low noise and we only deliver valuable announcements and solid, helpful information. And we don’t share our email addresses with anyone.
Yesterday I spoke with a commercials producer about some of the things that she’s seeing on her sets that are environmentally friendly. Here’s a short list of things that she said are working well.
- Using Brita jugs and glasses at meetings and in post-production rooms, resulting in far fewer disposable water bottles.
- Recycling cans everywhere.
- Buffet lunches, no “to go” packaging. Some caterers have switched to real plates and cutlery instead of paper and plastic.
This is just the start of where were going. We’d like your help. If you have an idea that can help reduce waste on the set without bringing the production to halt let us know in the comments below or via Twitter @blinkbid.
photo credit: © Blanca – Fotolia.com
Hello Lou;
Having worked on over 60 films (most of them large) I can tell you that one of the most useless thing I see done on set is the destruction of “the set”. I grew up logging and the crew I worked with replanted 10 trees for every tree harvested. All of the trees cut were selective harvest which means the Forest Service comes through and marks the trees that need to come down to help the forest as a whole. ANYWAY, on set there is usually heavy equipment that comes in and crushes the lumber used for the previous set to make way for the new set. I know the issues are union and insurance and time. All of these could be addressed in a way that would benefit all but especially the waste that occurs on almost every set.
Food is another item but the waste noted above is a major one that isn’t addressed much.