We cherish the environment that sustains all life.
Through adhering to the principles and values held by Māori about environmental custodianship and guardianship, as a sector, we can move towards upholding the responsibilities of partnership envisioned in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Environmental sustainability can seem like a daunting challenge, but once broken down into steps, it’s actually really achievable.
We’ve prepared for you here a quick start guide for a production, with links to the relevant pages in Greenlit.
Increasing your knowledge around environmental sustainability can help demystify the whole process of improve practice. A great place to start are our FAQs which answer some common questions.
When production crews conduct activity on Māori land, it’s imperative to understand that the health of the people is intrinsically tied to the health of their land.
Where the land may not be occupied or legally be determined as Māori land, it’s important to acknowledge that it was previously inhabited by Māori for generations and that the current designation of that land is likely due to land confiscation through colonisation.
Therefore, we need to see the historical context, to understand how that has led to our current situations and apply environmental efforts in all land and ocean territories.
Become familiar with the obligations and standards that Aotearoa (New Zealand) is committed to. These can inform your own objectives for your production and provide broader context to the importance of environmental sustainability on a global scale.
Create an Environmental Policy for your company or production. This communicates your commitment towards implementing environmentally sustainable practice.
Doing an initial estimation for the potential greenhouse gas emissions and waste footprint of your production can assist in identifying areas where you can seek to reduce strategically.
Projections can be specific and detailed, or you can take a more general approach using our emissions estimation tool which returns results based on industry averages.
Budget your production ensuring that you’re allowing enough resources to meaningfully support environmental sustainability measures. This means allowing for resources to engage with a Sustainability Manager early on in the process.
Before commencing pre-production it is essential to create a sustainability action plan. This ensures you’re taking a strategy approach, and helps prevent reactivity and being on the back foot from the start.
Now is also the time to start your Sustainability Department (the manager in particular), so that they can assist in onboarding your crew – establishing good processes from day one.
As you get into pre-production, it’s time to start collecting and recording data. This is where it becomes important to have consistent data collection processes in place, and a carbon calculator program to capture and process all the emissions data.
As everyone begins work, it’s time to focus on how you can support them in their role, empowering them with the knowledge and resources to implement your Sustainability Action Plan and ensuring you’re communicating the production’s environmental commitments.
The Greenlit Carbon Calculator has an onboarding form that you can email to your cast and crew, collecting data you will need for calculating your greenhouse gas emissions.
Production has started and everything is humming along. Here are some additional tools & resources to help you through the shoot.
A Sustainability Report is generally comprised of three parts:
You’ve wrapped and everything went to plan. Your report looks better than it did on your last production, and it’s now time to offset your carbon emissions, contribute to wider sector knowledge on sustainability and – if required – have your greenhouse gas emissions officially audited.
An industry-wide collaboration for environmental sustainability within the Aotearoa, New Zealand screen sector