UCLA experts urge film/TV industry to think ‘green’

By Phil Hampton

When the makers of “Matrix Reloaded” constructed a 1.5-mile-long freeway on the runways of the old decommissioned naval air station in Alameda for their chase scenes, they didn’t just walk away from the set when their cyber-thriller was in the can.

Together with the production team of “The Matrix Revolutions,” the moviemakers arranged for more than 97% of their set material to be recycled — including some 11,000 tons of concrete, structural steel and lumber.

The makers of the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” which portrayed the cataclysmic collapse of cities due to global warming, showed they take climate change seriously. They paid roughly $200,000 so that trees could be planted and other measures taken to offset the carbon dioxide emissions caused by vehicles, generators and other machinery used to make the movie.

While these individual efforts are laudable, the industry’s structure and culture hamper the pace of such “green” practices, according to UCLA Institute of the Environment researchers who looked at this issue in a new environmental report card released Nov. 14.

Although some industry associations have begun presenting awards for environmental performance and issuing “green” production guidelines, there is little or no systematic monitoring of individual productions or firms for this. This does “not favor a conclusion that the film and television industry is doing all it can,” researchers said in the institute’s ninth annual Southern California Environmental Report Card.

“Many industries are moving toward more environmentally sustainable operations, and it’s important that we monitor their progress,” said institute director Mary D. Nichols, a UCLA law professor and former secretary of the California Resources Agency. “This is the first time our annual report card has examined a specific industry, and it makes sense to start with the film and television industry given its prominence in Southern California.”

The report card, the institute’s signature publication, draws on the expertise of faculty in various disciplines to examine and grade performances in four environmental areas in the hope of stimulating debate on policies aimed at environmental protection.

In this latest report, the institute’s researchers looked at the shortage of urban parkland, studied how metals and other pollutants in the atmosphere contaminate the ocean and impair coastal water quality, and discussed how technological developments are transforming our ability to monitor ecosystems.

To examine how the film and television industry are handling environmental issues, Charles J. Corbett, associate professor of operations and environmental management at the Anderson School of Management, and Richard P. Turco, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, interviewed 43 industry insiders and assigned grades to the industry of “A” for environmental best practices and “C” for industrywide action.

Corbett and Turco estimated the combined contributions to air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts resulting from film and TV activities are no small matter.

Within the five-county Los Angeles region, the industry and associated activities make “a larger contribution to conventional air pollution than four of the five other sectors we studied,” they said. While the industry trailed petroleum refining, it topped aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing.

“Clearly there is room for improvement in the environmental performance of a number of major regional industries,” the two professors said.

The full report card is available at www.ioe.ucla.edu.

Staff writer Cynthia Lee contributed to this story.