Balancing Live Entertainment and Sustainability

With fans travelling halfway across the country, stars expecting first class flights and venues serving up beefburgers and drinks in plastic cups the worlds of professional sport and live music share a pretty poor reputation for environmental impact. Add in the wasteful habits of high end film and TV productions and it starts to look as though anything that's fun has a disproportionate impact on the planet.

In Liverpool, they're hoping to change all that. The United Nations has asked the city to use its reputation as a hotbed of culture to devise ways to cut the carbon cost of live events and film production. To launch the project the city is hosting a conference and a series of high profile gigs with Massive Attack, Idles and Chic to showcase best practice and spread the word that fun doesn't need to cost the planet.

Helen Czerski and Tom Heap host a panel from the worlds of sports, entertainment and science to discuss a green future for fun, in front of an audience at Liverpool's Exhibition Centre.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Assistant Producer: Toby Field

Rare Earth is produced in association with the Open University