Over 100 actors are backing Green Rider, a campaign by Equity For A Green New Deal to improve sustainability in the UK’s film and TV industry.
Green Rider calls for conditions attached to actor’s contacts, known as ‘riders, to be more environmentally friendly.
Actors who have agreed to the Green Rider conditions include Ben Whishaw, Mark Rylance, Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson, Gemma Arterton, David Harewood, Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Paapa Essiedu, Bella Ramsey, Adrian Dunbar and Romola Garai.
The campaign comes as actors and musicians demand unsustainable conditions in their riders it was recently reported George Clooney reportedly had a hot tub, beach hut, decking area and basketball court installed close to his trailer at Shepperton studios in Surrey.
Equity stated the Green Ride is not about “making demands” but about “creating new norms and working across departments to reduce our environmental impact, from the waste created to the way we travel.”
“Like all other industries, we have much to do and we’re up for the journey,” it added.
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The Green Rider deal terms include:
- Actors considering environmental cost of transport and accommodation and avoiding high impact choices such as fossil-fuel powered vehicles
- Actors to take trains, not planes in UK and Europe
- Producers to provide low carbon transport options
- Producers to prove artists with a trailer with renewable energy
Ramsey said: “We can make all the films in the world about climate change but unless we are environmentally conscious in the process of making them, our efforts are superficial.”
Essiedu said: “This summer has brought into sharp focus the reality that climate disaster is not a problem of the future but one of the now. The accepted normal practices of the film industry are rife with waste and a lack of consciousness as to the damage we are causing our planet. But these practices can be challenged and changed.”
Rylance said the film industry was “notorious for its waste and unecological practices”, adding: “Just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean to say we can’t do anything.”
