by Jack AshleyGreen Punks
The film industry as a whole has a problem. A throwaway attitude to waste. The average blockbuster production can create a whopping 225 tons of scrap metal, 75 tons of food waste, and 50 tons of construction waste and debris.
During a recent, albeit slightly smaller scale, Film Punk’s production in London with one of our agency partners, The Canopy, we were going to be faced with a mega clean-up operation once we wrapped.
After two days of blood, sweat, and tears that resulted in some incredible content for AEG Tools, there were a lot of excess materials to dispose of. We had built two large sets; one for photography and one as a live production studio.
The sets consisted of a huge 3-metre steel pipe (where we even had to remove a wall to get it in to begin with!), a 5-metre wall, and a lorry load of other materials including plasterboard, OSB boards, and stud wall batons. In our project management projections, this would have cost more than £1,000 to remove with a waste management and disposal company.
We thought it would be absurd, nevermind costly, for all this material to end up in landfill. Once we knew what was left, we set about seeing what we could do to minimise our impact on the environment and whether or not there was anywhere in the local community where it could be donated.
Shortly after uploading an advert on social media, two chaps arrived to not only collect everything and remove it all for free, but to reuse it on another project. It turns out they were building a craft beer bar on the south coast – so hopefully at some point there’s a couple of pints coming our way…
As a team, we are always looking to make our video shoots as green as possible, and will always address it in the planning stages of the project – how do we do our best to make sure this shoot is as waste free as possible? How do we manage our impact?
We also help to offset our carbon thanks to the folks over at Ecologi, where we commit a percentage from each project to help fund impactful climate solutions. We’re striving to do our small bit and improve all the time, and are constantly reviewing the way we can become more eco friendly.
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