Carly McLaughlin, a carbon emissions expert, Dale Vince, a green energy pioneer, and Danusha Samal, a sustainable entertainment advocate, come together to challenge the environmental impact of live events. They discuss groundbreaking initiatives in Liverpool aiming to marry fun with sustainability. Highlights include innovations like battery-powered equipment for concerts and plant-based catering options. The conversation also tackles the complexities of reducing waste in sports and entertainment while maintaining their joyful essence.
Live entertainment, including concerts and sports, has a substantial carbon impact, necessitating innovative decarbonization strategies to mitigate environmental harm.
Collaborative initiatives in cities like Liverpool aim to establish low-carbon models for live events, demonstrating that joy and sustainability can coexist.
The adoption of Green Riders allows performers to advocate for sustainable practices, promoting environmental awareness within the entertainment industry while satisfying their own needs.
Deep dives
Examining the Carbon Footprint of Fun
Live entertainment, from music concerts to sporting events, significantly contributes to carbon emissions. Major sports events, particularly football matches, require vast transportation logistics, generating enormous carbon costs. For example, attending a premiership football game may result in a carbon footprint from fans traveling, which is notably higher than traveling by train. As this form of entertainment continues to thrive, the focus has shifted to finding ways to decarbonize these experiences without sacrificing the joy they bring to people's lives.
Transforming Live Music for Sustainability
Live music events often involve extensive travel and equipment transportation, leading to high carbon emissions. Initiatives like Accelerator City aim to create a model for low-carbon live music production in cities like Liverpool by standardizing equipment use among venues and artists. A successful example was Massive Attack's gig powered entirely by renewable battery energy, illustrating the potential for a lower carbon approach in concerts. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration across the industry to adopt sustainable practices for future events.
Greening Film and TV Productions
Film and television productions also have a significant carbon cost, primarily due to energy demands and material waste. The production of major films can emit substantial greenhouse gases, with the use of diesel generators being a prominent issue. Producers are beginning to explore cleaner energy options and incorporate sustainability into their budgets and workflows, as evidenced by the initiative to electrify locations commonly used for filming. With growing awareness, there is an industry shift toward reducing the carbon footprint while maintaining creative integrity.
Sustainable Practices in Sports
Sports events, particularly football, face criticism for their environmental impact, primarily due to fan travel and energy use. Initiatives like the Green League support teams in adopting and promoting sustainable practices, such as reducing food carbon footprints by eliminating meat at venues. Clubs like Forest Green Rovers showcase the potential for change by providing fully plant-based food options and advocating for sustainability as part of their identity. By interweaving sustainability into the core operations of sports teams, a more significant cultural shift towards eco-friendliness can be achieved.
Empowering Industry Change with Green Riders
The concept of Green Riders offers a promising approach for actors and performers to advocate for sustainable practices on set. By incorporating environmentally friendly clauses in contracts, including requests for plant-based catering and transportation by public transit, performers can push for change while ensuring their own needs are met. Initiatives to garner support from big-name actors can catalyze significant transformation throughout the industry. This approach aligns environmental concerns with industry practices, promoting a more sustainable future for entertainment.
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
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