Adopting sustainable practices within the art, design and props departments can make significant contributions to lowering carbon emissions for a production. This section gives advice and insight from interviews with three different specialists who are already leading changes in their field.
From your department’s perspective, how can productions become more sustainable?
- The production needs to have a commitment to working sustainably – if the production team isn’t on board, it limits what we can achieve in our department.
- The production team needs to make fewer last-minute changes – this reduces everyone’s ability to make sustainable choices, and can result in more waste.
- Art departments need to reuse and recycle materials wherever possible, so we can significantly reduce what we send to landfill.
- Everybody should be encouraged to choose sustainable options when it comes to personal decisions, e.g. paperless, meat-free, only travelling where necessary.
What are your top tips for sustainability within your department?
Organisational changes:
- Start talks with production early and raise sustainability at the outset to get everyone on board, including construction management.
- Source materials locally to reduce the need for transport.
- Use public transport rather than cars if possible, use electric vehicles rather than petrol and reduce mileage by car sharing.
- Start with the small stuff, such as everyone bringing their own water bottles, to create an environment of sustainability.
- Go to the producers with solutions and suggestions, not problems. For example, if you say something vague like ‘we shouldn’t send this all to landfill’, you’re not going to get anywhere – they don’t have time to solve that. But if you tell them you can clear the prop store in three days while recycling and donating things to charity, that’s a clear course of action that they can agree to.
Considerations with set items:
- The set should be designed to minimise the materials needed, and then those should be sourced from recycled materials.
- Design the set with re-use in mind and make it easy to dismantle, so it can be sold, donated, stored for future use, or broken up for easy recycling.
- When making choices, consider the whole lifecycle of the material, including transport and energy costs..
- Hire in items where possible.
- Consider alternatives when choosing materials, such as using scaffolding to support sets rather than wood, or biodegradable snow for SFX.
- Find alternatives to plastic where possible, or ensure plastics are recycled if they can’t be avoided.
- Find out what resources are available locally, and what can be recycled in the country you’re working in. For example, MDF can be recycled in Germany.
- Set up systems and processes to consider during planning what could happen to the set after the production wraps to prevent it going to landfill.
- In an ideal world, when you’ve finished using the set, it would be carefully stored or the materials reused as far as possible (ideally 100%).
- Try to use companies, networks or platforms specialising in reuse and resource sharing. For example, asset storage companies who take in sets and props for reuse or repurposing, ready for other studios or productions to purchase them.
The brief was that any built design should use no plastic and all materials used should be fully recyclable. As a reflective surface we used brass which is infinitely recyclable. For structure, we mainly used steel. Making a design choice to use the beautiful venue as part of the design reduced the need for too much new build. The built pieces of set were designed to be reused. Approximately 60% were created and shipped to form part of our new design for The Earthshot Prize 2022.
Peter Bingemann, Production Designer
The Earthshot Prize (2021): BBC Studios
On this set:
- We reused floorboards to create a wooden floor as part of the set. They were then recycled and used again.
- The audience seats were borrowed from one of the locations we were filming in.
- Nearly all the locations were within walking distance of the offices, which reduced our transport.
These decisions were made as pragmatic, practical choices with sustainability in mind.
Adam O’Neill, Supervising Art Director
Empire of Light: Searchlight Pictures, TSG Entertainment, Neal Street Productions
What are the biggest challenges to working sustainably in your department, and how have you overcome them?
Every production has a unique set of factors, depending on the requirements of the project, the location, the transport involved, the location of hire companies, etc. There isn’t a magic template we can use for each production. You need to ask lots of questions every time and work out what you can do.
One of the biggest challenges is the mindset that everything has to be purchased new and must be sent to landfill at the end of a production. Lots of set components could be re-used on other productions. But there are large costs involved in storing, cataloguing and maintenance. We need to work out how to improve in these areas.
Productions sometimes aren’t aware of the factors involved in producing beautiful sets sustainably. The materials that are cheapest, and quicker and easier to obtain are often the most unsustainable options, and last-minute changes leave us with very few options. We need to make productions aware of how much time and money sustainable options cost, so we can help them to help us.
Due to time constraints, I’ve seen brand new items go into the skip at wrap. Sometimes props from TV shows are binned because they don’t want collectors to get hold of things.
On one particular production, I talked to the production team to let me prevent this happening. I arranged for British Heart Foundation to collect items and used Purchase Orders to list what they could take. They took two Luton vans full of stuff – that’s two van-loads that was kept out of landfill, and it didn’t cost us anything. Also, the production could have claimed charitable donation against the production. If you plan, negotiate and are passionate, you can get things done.
Nat Bocking, Prop Master
How do you keep sustainability on the agenda?
- Get the producers on board – they can then lead the agenda from the top
- Include sustainability in all conversations, and as part of every decision from day one.
- Work with the director to ensure that decisions made work for everyone, and we’re not shifting a problem from one department to another.
Any resources or groups you’d recommend?
Community Wood Recycling – a nationwide network of 30 social enterprises who collect wood waste from companies and sell and make a range of wooden products.
Albert’s biodiversity guide for productions – can help with the planning from recycling and props to paints and disposal, to help incorporate this into decision making (biodiversity has a huge impact on climate change).
Set swap cycle Facebook group – an informal market place for materials, props and useful information for assistants, prop makers, set builders and others.
Slapp.pro – a useful app for photographing items that may need to be recycled or reused.
With thanks to
Adam O'Neill, Supervising Art Director
Nat Bocking, Props Master
Peter Bingemann, Set Designer