How to reduce fuel consumption by 12,000 litres – A “Tell us What’s Happening” Story

As part of connecting with the industry (i.e. you!) we’ve opened a “Tell Us What’s Happening Portal” which is a digital hotline to let us know what’s going on in your world with sustainable production. We’ve received submissions from members of the industry and would like to share with you some of their experiences!

This month we’d like to feature a what’s happening story from Reel Green Ambassador Clara George. Clara, a local producer, has been working on some exciting projects this summer including forwarding her Reel Green Ambassador pledge which is to focus on the numbers to reduce environmental impact on productions. The numbers are in for her most recent production:

Stats below are measured in comparison to the previous season of this production.

Fuel/Energy

• In 12 weeks of production, the team is down 21% YOY (year over year) on fuel consumption.
• We used 20,000 litres LESS than the same time period last season.

We also:

• implemented strict no-idling policies and added "Proudly an idle-free production" to all vehicle dash cards.

• switched part of the transportation fleet from gas to diesel for better consumption.

• rented hybrids or fuel boost cars for out of town crew.

• updated power distribution in the main stage that historically has always required multiple generator support. With some investigation and help from BC Hydro and Creative BC, we discovered the main stage had more than enough power, just not enough switches. With this update, we reduced the production’s generator count from 4 to 1 for stage days.

• rented 3 electric 5K Voltstacks from Portable Electric and shot on location with using only the Voltstacks and tie-ins available which eliminated the need for a diesel generator.

• switched 70% of the studio lighting to LED lighting.

Paper

• Over 3 months of production, we were down 30% on photocopies YOY.

We used 200,000 fewer sheets of paper by:

• implementing digital paperwork through apps like Scriptation.

• printing on demand and not preemptively. Scripts, schedules, memos etc. were emailed out & printed only for those individuals asking for them.

• reducing the number of sides, call sheets, and pages on call sheets; we reduced the number of call sheets sent to set by 50%.

• stocking the trucks with paper copies of all the safety handouts so it was not required to physically put them on the call sheets.  

• using 100% recycled paper and printing all revisions on white paper. Coloured paper was used very sparingly.

Food:

The team managed to lower beef consumption by 65% YOY and consumed 100 Lbs LESS red meat per shoot week. In the 12 weeks, we reduced beef consumption by 1,200 lbs (based on average show consumption for equivalent crew size) and did not serve beef for office lunches or craft service. Finally, we bought stainless steel cutlery for the caterers which were run through the office dishwasher daily & cycled back to the truck.

Plastic:

The production did not purchase ANY single-use plastic water bottles this season. We had water filling stations everywhere and used compostable options for single-use water containers. That’s a savings of almost 2,850 plastic water bottles!

Education:

Reel Green came out and gave a 15 min presentation before our Respectful Workplace seminar with over 200 of our crew in attendance!  We also built a central green bulletin board by the office lunch line which had information regarding sustainable best practices and sent out a weekly "green tip" on the call sheet emails.

A huge congrats to Clara and her team for making a real (Reel 😉 ) difference by the numbers! Clara will also be a panelist at the upcoming Sustainable Production Forum as part of VIFF Impact Stream on Oct. 5th and 6th!

Tell us what’s happening in your world!