Much has been said recently about the cumulative effect personal environmental choices will have on regulating climate change. Is every small step coming too little too late? How do we know which choices are merely virtuous posturing, as some have characterized them, and which ones will make a difference?
When David Schwimmer’s enviro-mascot “Greenzo” morphed from “non-judgmental business friendly” to relentless green evangelist on 30 Rock, we knew it would end badly, but we watched and laughed anyway as he spun desperately out of control. Anyone contemplating a climate shift in personal living and work habits has to feel a kind of lurid kinship with Greenzo. If I bag my lunch and recycle my soda can every day, that’s one thing. But if I suggest that everyone in my office should bag their lunches, recycle and ride their bikes to work, will I start to sound like this guy, too? How much is enough?
Even if you don’t agree with the more abstract solutions to this problem, such as offsetting your carbon footprint by paying a voluntary tax (as our featured Hot House, Brand New School, does), few can argue with wanting to cut down on waste, cut back on energy bills, and cut out needless business habits that only serve to add to your clutter. Since last year, we’d been hearing anecdotal evidence that many of you were shifting your practices both on set and in your facilities. After we received the article from Scott Gribble, which begins on page 28, we sent out a reader survey to find out more. The survey specifically addressed work practices, and like the larger theme of going green, it produced several strong opinions. It also revealed many more like-minded ideas and confirmed our decision to address the topic in a single issue of the magazine. Forty percent of those who answered our survey use tapeless cameras regularly and more than a third buy equipment from manufacturers with "green initiatives". A few of you already have green business plans in place or work in LEED-certified buildings (based on the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design rating system). Some have installed solar panels or wind turbines to power your studios or have switched to FLO lights and cleaner batteries. Yet the vast majority are recycling, reusing and lowering power consumption on a regular basis. (Excerpts from the survey, as well as pro-environmental resources and more about company initiatives, appear throughout the feature story and in Gear Up).
As the writer Michael Pollan said recently, "Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will". Whether you are changing your production habits because you want to make a difference on a larger scale, or you just want to trim your own operating expenses, it’s encouraging to learn just how much you are all doing at the same time.
– Beth Marchant, Editor-in-Chief
bmarchant@accessintel.com