Equity, the UK performing arts and entertainment trade union, has launched a new initiative that aims to make TV and film production more eco-friendly.
The Green Rider, which is being backed by leading actors including Mark Rylance, Gemma Arterton, and David Harewood, amounts to a series of clauses that Equity is encouraging its members to add into their contracts. These range from changing set locations to using reusable coffee cups, but they all share the same ambition: to reduce the environmental impact of the production process.
Here’s a look into how the rider could impact actors in the UK, whether they’re Equity members or not.
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The use of riders in the entertainment industry, whereby performers make specific requests for their treatment on set or on tour, is nothing new. Equity is using the term to encourage its membership—which comprises around 47,000 British performers and creative practitioners—to campaign for sustainability on set. The Green Rider document prompts actors to insist on things like waste reduction, recycling, and reduced energy usage as contractual obligations.
An accompanying statement was signed by more than 100 union members. It quotes Albert’s 2020 Screen New Deal report, which found that the average big-budget film production generates 2,840 tonnes of CO2. “As a high-emitting sector, our industry has a key part to play in the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon society,” the statement says.
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The Green Rider is divided between obligations on the part of artists and producers. Sections include travel/accommodation, energy use, and catering. Each includes proposals that detail both larger aspirations and practical specifics, such as actors sharing trailers and dressing rooms and productions prioritising the use of low-carbon transport such as trains and electric vehicles, where possible.
Other clauses outline measures such as actors using their own makeup products and designers sourcing costumes from secondhand or sustainable suppliers. Finer details include the use of compostable cutlery if reusable utensils are not available, and actors bringing their own reusable products to set, such as coffee cups and water bottles.
The Overarching Principles section asks that actors consider the carbon impact of all requests made by the production and help reduce the production’s footprint wherever possible. They are also encouraged to “use their voice offscreen (on social media and in interviews) to highlight the sustainable production process and its importance.”
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If a production implements all clauses in the document, the implications will be significant. Many will also involve additional costs, such as hiring a sustainability lead with the authority to enact eco-friendly policies on the ground, and the provision of “comprehensive sustainability training” for the cast and crew at the outset of a production.
Producers are obligated to film in locations that require the least overseas travel, commit to using crews from the surrounding area, and use new technology where appropriate to “create VR locations onsite.” They should also be mindful of wider human impacts. A key caveat insists that “none of these sustainability principles add to or exacerbate existing hierarchies of racism, ableism, or sexism on set.”
Several clauses have wider implications for how early career actors should get involved in the production process. For example, the Materials and Waste section states that producers should “facilitate communication around sustainability between the artist and creative departments before initial fittings.”
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Equity explains that the rider is “a tool designed to empower artists to negotiate better practices in TV and film.” The clauses it contains can be included in full or in part by all Equity members in their contracts.
It recognises that not all stipulations will apply to every production and that the rider “can and should be adapted to artist and production circumstances.” The rider acknowledges that members may be limited in their ability to insist on all clauses being implemented—for instance, if the project they’re working on has already begun filming.
The ambition of the initiative is to change the culture around film and TV production through collective pressure by Equity members. According to Televisual, “The Green Rider can be added to screen artists’ contracts in order to state their own sustainability commitments and to negotiate bolder sustainability standards on set before accepting a job. The overarching aim is for the Green Rider to be included in the collective agreements that Equity holds with producers.”
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Although aimed at Equity members, the Green Rider was created in hopes of inspiring change across the industry—so it’s a worthwhile read for any actor, regardless of union status. (And if you’re working in the UK, we strongly suggest you join.)
The rider’s stipulations outline useful, practical steps that all members of a production team can take to reduce a project’s environmental impact. No matter how big or small, any level of improvement when it comes to sustainability is a step in the right direction. And if the Green Rider recommendations do become the industry standard, that will be seriously good news for everyone.
As the introduction to the Green Rider says, “Art has historically played its part in societal shifts: The 1980s cultural boycott of South African Apartheid, the rise of #MeToo, our industry’s resourceful adaptation to COVID, and the recent WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes prove we have the power to act collectively and make big changes when necessary. Now is the time to take that same radical action for sustainability.”
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