When it comes to showing environmental and climate change messages on the big screen, Hollywood could look to the likes of Will and grace AND Greetings for inspiration, Sam Read, executive director of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, said Saturday in Toronto.
Speaking on a panel titled “Strategies for Sustainable Filmmaking” at the industry conference section of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, he said: “While this industry has a carbon footprint that we need to address, and we're all working hard on it here, I think we can compare it to industries like cement – [and] it's smaller. But where we are much bigger is our cultural footprint.”
This means that the entertainment industry has a platform to showcase and enable change. “We've seen over the years the power that this industry has to influence the way people see things,” Read said. “You look at something like Will and grace and the success of that and how it changed views on gay marriage and LGBT rights. Or look at the designated drivers, who came from Greetings and kind of use that as a message for social impact. We talk a lot about this opportunity to influence and support sustainable behaviors.”
The Alliance, a consortium of entertainment industry stakeholders working to reduce their global environmental impact and inspire a sustainable future, is always looking at “how we can support creators who want to tell these stories in exploring how climate change interacts with all of our lives…and what sustainable behaviors could be showcased on screen,” he explained. “It could be something specific like an entire show written around it, but it could also be something small like putting solar panels on a house in the background of a shot. Or if you’re writing a sitcom and you’re writing the dad as a plumber, can you make the dad a solar panel technician?”
Of course, the key thing is not to force things into the content. Read explained that it’s important “that we don’t impose ourselves and say, ‘OK, you’re writing a period drama from the 1700s. How do you incorporate climate change?’ It doesn’t make any sense. But if you’re writing a sitcom that’s happening now, how do you adapt it, how do you incorporate that message or those behaviors?”
The panel was designed to highlight “strategies for implementing eco-friendly methods to meet urgent environmental goals without compromising creative vision, budgets, or production quality,” according to the TIFF website. “Environmental sustainability in film and festivals is rapidly evolving, introducing cutting-edge practices to reduce the carbon footprint on set, from development to post-production.”
The other two speakers were Ontario Film Commissioner Justin Cutler and Arsalan Talebzadeh, director of partnerships at Invert, a company focused on carbon reduction and removal.
Experts stressed that sustainability efforts should start early in production planning and must be honest and serious. First, understanding the impact of a production and taking steps to reduce it always comes “before we actually take action and offset,” Talebzadeh said. “We really don’t want our customers to be labeled as greenwashing. We don’t want to be associated with it and we don’t want them to be associated with it.”
There’s also constant innovation to track. “Reducing emissions in concrete or building more green concrete” is one of his company’s current goals, he shared. “There’s a Canadian company called Carbon Cure that we’ve supported. They’re able to capture CO2 and inject it into the concrete mix. And what that does is it actually allows you to reduce the amount of cement. The cement industry is responsible for almost 10 percent of emissions in the world. So, it’s a two-fold benefit. Not only are you capturing the CO2 and injecting it in there…, but you’re also reducing the use of cement in the upstream value chain all the way to the mining side of it.”
Cutler added that “we’ve had 900 people take our carbon accounting training and our sustainable action courses,” which are free. “It’s really helped us build a community of ambassadors on set.”
Additionally, “there are all kinds of opportunities that we could take advantage of,” he told the panel. “Sustainable lockups are a big opportunity for Ontario right now, which we’ve seen build in New York and British Columbia, but we’ve seen big vendors in Ontario pick up that torch and run with it,” he said. Because the entertainment industry processes large amounts of material, such lockups house used materials, from costumes, props and props to equipment, and redistribute them to other productions or the community instead of sending them to landfill.
Cutler added: “We also have some really good production designers who are thinking about designing sets that can be reused, which I think is really important. So we’re taking a more tactical approach and we’re starting to see some great results.”
Read said the Alliance is creating tools for industry, such as a carbon calculator that can be used “to measure the carbon footprint of any production, taking into account fuel, travel, accommodation, all of these sectors.”
They also put together benchmarking reports. Read summarized a key point from them this way: “About half, more or less, of any given carbon emissions generation comes from fuel, and that’s largely driven by transportation, so the trucks and cars that are used to transport crew and equipment, but also diesel generators that are used as a reliable source of mobile power,” he explained. “Our members do a lot of work on clean mobile energy and trying to expand access to batteries and work with crews to figure out how to get the most out of those batteries as a replacement for a diesel generator, or how to work with electric vehicles and get a replacement for a diesel truck.”