“The Green Studio”: a plan.

What is the Green Studio? Essentially, it is a low impact, generally organic, low waste, recycling, sustainable photo / film studio.

This idea was first discussed at Kingsize a few years ago, after observing endless productions using plastic “Pump” water bottles for each crew member. These water bottles were contributing to a significant volume of rubbish, albeit recycled. What also made me think was the amount of wasted water that was being thrown away from people not finishing their drinks. At the time we were in the film-digital cross over period, so the reality of the situation was that there was little we could do to “green” the studio, when there was so much waste created by Polaroids, film, chemistry, and paper. The future of digital dominating the commercial scene meant that as film disappeared and digital took over, we could focus on the basics such as electricity and water consumption, etc.

At Kingsize, we operate multiple bathrooms, kitchens, and indoor studios to heat or cool, and all the lights and electrical appliances to keep switched on, virtually every day. So the question has been, what can we do to conserve resources, while still maintaining full services.

The plan for this year, is to take small steps that will hopefully add up to be significant in the long term. One example is to try to eliminate any non-organic cleaning products, and aim for all organic grey water: which when you are taking about several bathrooms and kitchens is quite a big deal.

I have googled this subject, hoping to find other studios already doing this, but there was virtually nothing I could find, so I consider this an “open source project”, that we can all contribute to. We are calling this “the Green Light Project”, and if you have any suggestions, email me, and I will post the ideas for discussion.

Sectors of the photographic industry is pretty low impact, except for our travel, while others maybe very high impact, relying on huge amounts of paint, synthetic materials, transport costs, and so on. Often for example, waste props, sets, etc are usually recycled, but we all rely on using sheets of polystyrene in the studio, cameras and computer and lighting equipment built with plastics, mainly imported goods, rolls and rolls of paper, and so on. There are questions we should all start asking our suppliers and partners as to what their green policy is. Look at the computer industry: recently they have been working towards full construction without harmful chemicals involved in manufacture or materials. Is it time we start questioning how our cameras, lights, and equipment are manufactured? How can we make our productions in general less wasteful?

Email us at shoot@kingsize.co.nz with feedback !

Adam Custins