Recycling is great, but reusing is even better. Reusing extends an object's lifespan which means less resources are wasted on producing new objects and less waste ends up in a landfill.
Here are a few things that I reuse:
old towels --> rags bread bags --> produce savers hummus containers --> leftover storage egg cartons --> bring back to farmer (so he can reuse!) ziploc bags --> wash and use again rubber bands twist ties
Everyone has their reuse magic tricks. We want to hear some of yours!
From M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense to Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, filmmaking in Philadelphia has become big business. The industry generates millions of dollars in revenue, promotes tourism, and gives work to hundreds of union workers.
What it doesn't do, however, is obey the law.
Philadelphia has mandatory recycling laws for businesses, yet compliance is still the exception rather than the rule for businesses of all types throughout the city. The Philadelphia Commercial Recycling Guidelines require businesses to develop a Recycling Plan, submit it to the city, publicly post the plan on site, and distribute it to all employees. The plan must include:
providing recycling containers, and separating recyclables (high-grade office paper, aluminum, corrugated paper, ferrous and nonferrous metals, etc.) from garbage (food waste and other organics)
creating an education program to communicate expectations, changes, impacts, etc. to employees
Given the temporary nature of the film business, developing a recycling plan of this nature on each individual set would be difficult, but developing a template of recycling rules that would govern all filmmaking in this region could fulfill the city's requirements. These rules should reflect the reality that materials will differ depending on the department, and will need to be enforced on the set, on location, in the catering tents, and in the production office. Maintaining a list of recycling drop-off sites for construction materials and hazardous materials would also help to keep lumber, plastic and other building materials not currently included in the city's regulations from being sent to landfill.
Without these guidelines, employees concerned about the environmental impact of film have had little opportunity to change wasteful day to day practices, besides literally sorting recyclables out of the dumpster and carting them home for residential collection! Construction coordinators have also managed to donate some materials to organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but production managers are not accustomed to including recycling costs in their budgets, so spending man hours researching and redirecting these materials must be done surreptitiously, or off the clock.
Philadelphia would also benefit from having a business like Build It Green! NYC in the area. They are a "non-profit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials", where film productions could donate and shop for recycled building materials. In addition to lumber and sheetrock, designers can also shop for previously used cabinets and appliances in their inventory.
For more commercial recycling information, call the Philadelphia Recycling Hotline at 215-686-RECYCLE (7329) and check out the Pennsylvania page at Earth911.org for local recycling businesses.
You can also report any non-compliant business by emailing robin.geller@phila.gov.
Recently, I watched The 11th Hour, a simultaneously devastating and inspiring documentary narrated and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. Broader in scope than Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, this film is an urgent call-to-arms, adding toxic pollution, natural resource depletion, and mass species extinction to the list of environmental degradations threatening to irrevocably alter human existence.
Both men have been at the forefront of a fledgling celebrity environmental movement (it was DiCaprio and Gore, at the 2007 Academy awards, who announced that the Oscars had “officially gone green”) and they, along with many others, have been using their star power and wealth as tools to raise awareness about our impact on the planet’s ecosystem.
Predictably, accusations of hypocrisy abound. Rampant consumption largely defines the entertainment business, but my admitted skepticism stems more from the movie industry’s failure thus far to recognize that it is during the actual construction of the sets that most of the environmental destruction takes place.
As a scenic painter, I know firsthand the sheer amount of wood, steel, aluminum, plastic, etc. that fills the dumpsters daily, often for scenes that never make it into the final film. Houses, restaurants, even entire apartment buildings and shopping malls are built from rainforest luaun wood and formaldehyde-filled lumber, only to be shot for a few weeks (or days), and then thrown away. Gallons of toxic, petrochemical paint, solvents, and adhesives not only find their way into our waterways and landfills, but into the lungs and bloodstreams of the workers, even on huge, multi-million dollar union productions.
It is routine for designers to demand (and for production to pay for) large-scale, costly changes throughout the course of a build, but requests for less toxic, more sustainable building materials are deemed too expensive. In fact, it has been my experience that the larger the film’s budget, the more waste it generates, and the more safety and environmental regulations are ignored. While any positive changes, from recycled office paper to hybrid cars are welcome, no amount of carbon credits can “offset” the effects of chronic toxin exposure on worker health, or reduce the amount of plastic permanently deposited in our planet’s oceans and soil.
Unfortunately, most of this takes place long before the shoot crew arrives, so how much actors like DiCaprio really know about what takes place during the making of a film is an open question. I know that it gets either scant attention, or is entirely absent from the various industry eco-activist websites (like 11thhouraction.com). Access to actors/directors/producers is, of course, limited, so we have the unfortunate circumstance where the people who know the most about what needs to change have no direct way to communicate with the people most able to make that change happen. Perhaps that is an environmental blind spot in most large corporations. But the film business has not just profit, but art, entertainment, and even education as goals, and it is clearly not just the viewing public, but the filmmakers and actors themselves that need to become fully aware of the irresponsible recklessness endemic in their industry.
There are some signs of change. New York, California and New Mexico are developing (voluntary) green production guidelines for film, complete with vendor lists for everything from organic craft services to zero voc paints. The Environmental Media Association has created the Green Seal Awards to acknowledge productions that make environmentally conscious choices. Films like Syriana and The Day After Tomorrow invested in offsets, in an attempt to address their carbon footprint. The two Matrix sequels hired the nonprofit ReUse People to repurpose and recycle the sets and The Evan Almighty crew donated trees and shrubs, lumber, and money from recycled steel to Habitat for Humanity. Hopefully, films like these (and Future Weather!) will lead the way towards a more sustainable film future.
This is the petrochemical detritus of our modern life. While nature recycles its detritus for nutrients, reincorporating it back into a sustainable system, our man-made plastics are “landfill”, literally filling the land, as well as our oceans, with non-biodegradable, non-renewable, toxic garbage. Rarely recycled, plastic accounts for an estimated 25% of all landfill space, and it is the fastest growing portion of municipal solid waste (plasticdebris.org). According to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, only 3.5% of plastic is recycled in any way, and 60-80% of all marine debris is now plastic. Here in Philadelphia, we only recycle 7% of our total waste, and have only recently begun to collect #1 and #2 plastics curbside.
So what is the answer? Obviously, the main thing we all can do is expand our understanding of plastic waste to include more than just plastic bags and water bottles. Sure, it’s great to bring your own bag to the store, but not filling that bag with products packaged in plastic is just as important. You might choose organic produce, but if it is put into plastic bags and trucked hundreds (or thousands!) of miles, the whole concept of sustainable agriculture is being polluted. Water and soda bottles may be recyclable in some areas, but the market for products made from recycled plastics cannot keep pace with our consumption, so a better solution is to not buy these products in the first place. Also, convenience foods and beverages are often packaged in plastic or styrofoam, but a great deal of evidence now suggests that chemicals like antimony, DEHP (di-2-ehtylhexyl phthalate), bispehonal-A and the carcinogenic benzene and styrene make their way into the foods and liquids they hold, which is reason enough to avoid them. And finally, plastics are made from petroleum, an often overlooked aspect of our dependency on foreign oil, so any efforts to shift to renewables must include not just new fuels but alternatives to all petrochemical products.
Many alternatives exist, such as:
stainless steel water bottles at www.kleankanteen.com (sold locally at Mugshots Coffeehouse)
It is well worth the trip to visit this amazing facility (about 45 minutes from Philadelphia) that takes everything listed at the beginning of this post, and MUCH more (see website for complete list). Also, you can save up your recyclables with family and friends, so that you only have to make the trip once or twice a year.
parts that are not needed, such as fruit skins, bones in meat, etc.
undesired things received, e.g.:
advertising material in the mailbox
a flyer received in the street without having the opportunity to refuse
dust, weed, fallen leaves, etc.
things one no longer needs, e.g. a magazine that has been read, things replaced by new versions, clothes out of fashion, remaining food that one cannot keep or does not want to keep
broken things, things no longer working, spoilt food, worn-out clothes, clothes which no longer fit
"In many countries, such as the United States, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in post-consumer waste once it leaves the consumer's home. Anyone can search it, including the police, and any incriminating evidence recovered can be used at trial."
As a writer, the one thing that’s problematic for me is that I really, really dislike taking notes on a computer. Constantly, I carry around a bag that contains at least two notebooks and enough pens to bathe a small puppy in ink. The pockets of my messenger bag are filled with index cards that I can quickly access if a thought hits me and I need to write it down ASAP. Draft upon draft of note-ridden screenplays lay in a pile on the floor by my bed. So when decreasing paper use comes up in discussing how to make our production more sustainable, I feel like a hypocrite.
I’m trying though. Lately, I’ve been editing pieces on my computer, something I’ve rarely done. I end up skimming more than I do when it’s on a piece of paper, and the pull of the internet is much stronger than I want to admit. But it’s a skill that I need to further develop, as technology won’t be waiting for me to catch up. And if I need to, I can always print out pages on the back of ones I’ve already used, a trick that I’ve picked up from Jenny.
I’ve also started reusing a lot of my older notebooks. Most of them are barely filled, wholly dedicated to projects that never made it farther than ten pages in said books. I have seven of these. Instead of carrying two or three books, each with a title referring to my musings, I’ve condensed it to one, a title and date written at the top of each page to jog my memory when I need it.
The note cards aren’t going anywhere for now, though. My greatest ideas have always started on a scrap of paper. As I write this, 2000 index cards are stacked on the corner of my desk waiting to be tacked onto a corkboard to map out characters and plotlines. Doing anything but using these up would be environmentally irresponsible. When they dwindle down though, I’m going to try my best to find responsible substitutes, whether it be the backs of outdated business cards, electronic "notecards" or recycled ones.
It might take me longer to edit, and I may have to spend more time in front of the computer. But these are things I know in the long run will not only be a positive for the environment, but also for improving my writing process. Sometimes, you gotta see the forest for the trees.
All film productions start in development. That typically occurs in an office (or a house in this case), so that's where we'll train our green goggles for the next few weeks.
Recycling, then, seems like the logical place to start once you're in that office. There's something basic and relatable about it – everything we do creates bi-products, and we all return to organic matter in the end...
I'd like to throw out a concept: when you've finished using something, you have many choices for what to do with it. This week, we'll discuss some of the smarter choices for what to do with office waste and have your deepest recycling questions answered by Philadelphia recycling maven, Jimmy Gardner.
Please feel free to post your questions here, and we'll make sure Jimmy gets them. And when you're done reading this, you can make a paper airplane out of it. In your mind.
