Green Light

Every company, every campaign, pretty much everything goes green nowadays. It might only be a publicity thing. And maybe some companies really only exploit this topic for their image brochure. The discussion of what people, working in the entertainment industry, can do to gain some positive effects on the environment has really kicked off over the past months.

New theatres now aim to reduce their negative footprint on the environment as much as possible. There are ways to also try to contribute to that. I myself did ask the question of how I could make a difference in my every day work. We do use a lot of power when we switch on the lights and there is very little we can do about that. But that is not entirely true. Reading some articles about the subject have resulted in a strategy of small steps, that I am trying to implement wherever I am working. It might only be small things, but you have to start somewhere.

So I try to reduce the impact of our work on the environment by
- switching off intelligent fixtures when they are not needed. This means also lunch or dinner breaks, production meetings and so on...
- using LED fixtures wherever reasonable. They are not meant for every purpose (yet) but they can help a lot already.
- a little less air travel. It is not necessary to always meet on site. Modern communication helps us to meet online.
- pre-programming larger parts of a show. A computer monitor, even a large one, requires much less energy than a whole working rig on site.
- not printing. I feel, there is no need to print almost anything nowadays. There are exceptions, but less paper can be achieved.
- trying to encourage technical crews to invest in re-usable cable ties. The PVC tape should be outdated at some point.

There are probably more things we could do. Please feel free to contribute and leave a comment with your ideas. I might extend the list above by your ideas. The message simply is: Think a little bit about how we all can contribute to a healthier future for your planet. It might be tiny things, but we have to start somewhere.