Tag Archives: Environment

The Environmental Impact of Filmmaking

By Jannik Schümann

Two things you should know about me that at first glance might have noth­ing in com­mon: First, I love to watch movies and series – to dive into oth­er worlds, to escape from real­i­ty, and just to have a good time. For me, there’s noth­ing bet­ter than going to the movies or lying on the couch on a rainy Sun­day, watch­ing a good movie, or bing­ing a series. I even play a piv­otal role in their cre­ation as I work as an actor myself. Sec­ond, I con­scious­ly try to live sus­tain­ably because what we con­sume or do has a direct impact on the world’s ecosys­tems. I don’t eat meat, I don’t dri­ve a car; instead, I use my bike or pub­lic trans­port. And I pay atten­tion to labels to sup­port com­pa­nies ded­i­cat­ed to sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion and fair wages for laborers.

Pho­to cred­it: Dominic Wunderlich

Two years ago, when I first read about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of film­mak­ing in The Guardian, I was shocked. I hadn’t real­ized that my love for movies and for my job could seri­ous­ly con­flict with my ded­i­ca­tion to the envi­ron­ment. Because the truth is: Block­buster films with bud­gets of over $70 mil­lion pro­duce an aver­age of 2,840 tons of CO2 per pro­duc­tion. That is equiv­a­lent to 11 one-way trips from the earth to the moon!

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