Film sets can get expensive. Stars need to get to the set from all around the world and they need their trailers to get ready in, coffee to keep them awake and water to hydrate them.
UK arts union Equity has come up with a solution to minimise or at least lessen the environmental burden caused by film sets.
The so-called Green Rider will be a range of clauses that can be added in actors’ contracts. The clauses can be anything from avoiding private jets, reusable water bottles and coffee cups brought from home. Every little helps, right?
Mark Rylance attends “The Tomorrow Gala For The Old Vic” on April 20, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)
Riders have been used in the entertainment industry for decades and they refer to requests made by talent for their workplace. With a Green Rider, an actor can opt to use trains instead of planes or to share their trailer as well as bringing in their own water bottles and coffee cups. The rider also mentions reducing “additional food or comfort requests that require runners to go off site”.
One of the first productions to use a Green Rider was Mark Rylance’s short film Spirit of Place. Rylance commented that film productions are “notorious for [their] waste and un-ecological practices”.
“Just because we can’t do everything, doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. Let’s clean up our workplace,” the Oscar-winning actor continued in a statement, as reported by BBC News.
Bella Ramsey, Tom Burke, Hayley Atwell, David Harewood, Bill Nighy, Paapa Essiedu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Juliet Stevenson, Dame Harriet Walter and Adrian Dunbar are amongst the roughly 100 actors who have signed their name on the dotted line.
Bella Ramsey in The Last Of Us. Credit: HBO
Ramsey said the Green Rider was “a practical route to positive change in the film and television industry in regards to sustainability”.
“A lot of the things that are being discussed, like people wanting to travel on private jets – these are status symbols and it doesn’t just come from what we show up for as actors, it comes from the media as well,” Burke told BBC News.
“We just have to unpick this and be a bit more grown-up about it, especially if we’re going to make a noise about caring.”
The Green Rider itself says: “During Covid, our industry adapted in ways we could not have imagined. We can and will change again to tackle the climate emergency.”
