Earlier this year, the San Sebastián Film Festival in the Basque region of Spain, which runs from Sept. 16 to 24, invited Creast to help cut its emissions, said Amaia Serrulla, who leads the festival’s sustainability efforts.
Creast teams have already made recommendations, Ms. Serrulla said, including that the festival work with local suppliers, use recyclable and reusable packaging and implement top-down LED lighting (rather than bottom-up, which is not as sustainable). They also advised cutting back on paper, so the festival is printing half as many festival guides as usual — and charging for them.
The festival, supported by a region that prides itself on its cuisine, did balk at one piece of the Creast teams’ advice: “They recommended not using meat,” Ms. Serulla said. “We have vegan options and vegetarian options, but we are not going to take meat out of the menu for now.”
The global entertainment industry generates millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the Producers Guild of America, a trade organization representing American producers of television, film and new media. That’s more than the aerospace, clothing, hotel or semiconductor industries, the Guild said.
“Climate change is the most pressing global issue facing us today,” said a March 2021 report by the Sustainable Production Alliance, a consortium established in 2010 that includes some of the world’s biggest film, television and streaming companies. The report added that a major production from a studio had an average carbon footprint of 3,370 metric tons, or 33 metric tons per day of shooting. Roughly half of that was from fuel consumption generated by air travel and utilities.
The British industry has similar issues. A report released in 2020 by the British Film Institute and other organizations found that on average, a major studio production generated 2,840 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of 11 one-way trips to the moon. Air travel alone produced as many emissions as 150 one-way flights from London to New York, or 3.4 million car miles, according to the report.
