The magic of film-making has always been about creating something extraordinary from nothing. The trouble is that for decades nobody really thought about what happened to all the stuff afterwards.
On this week’s Net Hero Podcast I sat down with Julie Hoegh, Head of Sustainability at Garden Studios, to talk about an industry that most of us never associate with carbon footprints, waste streams and circular economy thinking.
As someone who started in television more than 30 years ago, I remember diesel vehicles, generators, giant lighting rigs and endless amounts of kit moving around the country. Sustainability simply wasn’t part of the conversation.
Julie told me the biggest shock when she joined the industry wasn’t energy use. It was waste.
“When you see a film, when it’s filmed in a flat in Camden, you think they’ve actually been in a flat in Camden and filmed, but they haven’t. They have built a fake flat in Camden in our studios. And after filming they just put everything in the skip and throw it out.”
That means furniture, props, timber, set materials and huge amounts of construction waste can disappear after a production wraps.
The good news is attitudes are changing. Julie explained: “I’ve seen a huge change in the attitudes of productions coming in. Not as much as I’d like but, for example, now most productions will have a sustainability consultant whose sole purpose is to make everything as sustainable as possible.”
Garden Studios has become one of the industry’s pioneers.
Julie has led a major reuse programme that won recognition at Cannes and helps productions find second lives for props, furniture and construction materials.
“We make a huge effort in helping productions channel all their props and set material to people that can reuse it,” she told me.
What fascinated me most was the challenge of changing behaviour in an industry built around temporary teams. Unlike a normal business, film crews come together for a few months and then disperse.
Julie said: “I think that’s part of the problem in the industry generally. It’s a group of random people put together for a limited amount of time.”
Yet progress is happening. Garden Studios is now Europe’s only B Corp-certified film studio and one of just two worldwide.
For anyone interested in sustainability, film, television or how creative industries are changing, this is a fascinating conversation about the hidden environmental impact behind the screen.
Listen to the full episode of the Net Hero Podcast and download it now from your podcast platform of choice.
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