Pizzaday Green Film Making:

A student workshop about waste on set

On October 4th 2015 Green Film Making organized a pizza day for students in collaboration with Circular Economy Foundation: a workshop aimed at addressing the waste problem on set. After an introduction to sustainable production and circular economy several brainstorming sessions followed where the problem was approached from the biomimicry angle. In nature circles close themselves (nature works circular) and all the ‘waste’ is food or building material for others. Students studied how they can use waste on the set effectively, through biomimicry. The results achieved in the festival world recently, reinforcing the results of this pizza day.

Students with diverse backgrounds (among others students of the HKU, HvA, Saxxion Deventer, Fontys University Tilburg) were welcomed at a special location: The Aware House of carpet manufacturer Interface. In groups they went looking for insights and solutions, step by step and fed with examples from nature. The workshop was led by biologist and specialist in biomimicry Bowine Wijffels (Cailin Partners). Interface – a company that finds it’s inspiration for both the designs of their carpet tiles as well as their management in nature -is a leader in the Netherlands in sustainability and to Green Film Making an example to try to make sustainability work in the Dutch film industry.

With seemingly simple questions such as “What is waste?”, “Where does it come from? ‘,’ Who produces it? ‘,’ Who is responsible? ‘,’ What do we do with it?” … The day was kicked off . Immediately a big contrast was exposed: nature constantly produces “leftovers” but these”leftovers” are all used; for everything is a customer. Waste as humans know it and produce it, as a useless surplus, is strange in nature. Producers want to take responsibility while making a movie. What can we learn from nature to work more sustainable on the set? And how do we go about it? Natural ecosystems can not be controlled, but they can be influenced. What influence can be used on set when it comes to waste? Read a full report of the day here (dutch).

A positive result of the workshop is that a number of students will continue to research and develope their research question in their studies. Green Film Making has continued its mission in tackling waste on set in 2017 through the current tap water pilot and a partnership in waste collection (dutch) with Zero Waste Lab in Amsterdam East.