The figure of eco-manager is quite new and cross-disciplinary, since it affects all departments when filming. What are their main responsibilities during a shoot?

Eduardo: To summarize a lot, the theory, at least in our experience, tells us that the responsibilities of the eco-manager are to guarantee that the sustainability guidelines are followed during the shoot. A sustainability plan is prepared during the pre-production, after analyzing the script, the production design and the proposal by the director and the department heads. This sustainability plan is, indeed, cross-disciplinary and applies sustainability measures to all the departments involved in the production.

We have our own methodology, which tries to take away the eco-manager’s utopian responsibility of guaranteeing the sustainability of the production, informing people that the eco-manager is not a magician who, thanks to their mere presence and a few magical formulas, is going to succeed in making a shoot - with hundreds of people involved every day - run smoothly as regards sustainability. Above all, we want to prevent the recruitment of an eco-manager from serving as a toll that has to be paid so that the production company feels that it has done everything needed to produce sustainably and that it can continue to act as usual. The eco-manager and everything which contributes to sustainability is welcome, but it goes much further than that. It is teamwork, in which all the members of the production are involved. Our methodology is to get each participant in the production to think like an eco-manager.

In practice how does the action protocol affect sustainability during the shoot?

Eduardo: In our experience, without applying a sound methodology from the beginning and training all the personnel correctly, unfortunately the role of the eco-manager is reduced to making sure as far as possible that the waste is deposited in the correct containers, chasing up the teams to try to get them to show a minimum of respect for the sustainability guidelines and with great difficulty collecting the evidence and information necessary to measure the environmental impact.

For us, the figure of the eco-manager must be integrated in a much more complex structure in order to truly achieve something important as regards sustainability. We are in favour of training and empowering all the participants in the production, from the director, screenwriter, producers and team leaders, who are those who really have power to change the environmental impact with their decisions, down to the last runner. We’re in favour of each department having someone in charge of sustainability. And, more importantly, we are in favour of training an internal eco-manager in the production company, a permanent position in the structure of the production company who knows the company’s idiosyncrasy, since each production company is different.

How do you train an eco-manager?

Yolanda: For us, the ideal scenario is to train a permanent member of the production company. They tend to be from the company’s production or management team, and therefore someone who is already aware of sustainability issues.

It is someone who knows the workflows of the production company and has formed part of the project from the beginning, and can help from the development phase, which is essential for us. They also play a very decisive internal role in the production company, since they help to raise the awareness of and inform the usual personnel: producers, directors, directors of photography, art directors… This is the really important work.

We train this profile with a sound basis of sustainability applied to the audiovisual sector, taken from our methodology, and working very specifically on how their company works and on the type of projects that they shoot. We work continuously, side by side with this profile, to implement guidelines which reduce the environmental impact and the carbon footprint of each of the categories of emissions.

This person is really trained to be the ‘sustainability manager’ or ‘eco-manager’, and to introduce all the measures that are agreed with our help and guarantee that they are complied with during the production.

The ministry and the ICAA offer incentives for green shoots with their subsidies, linking them to sustainability. Can you explain what these measures consist of in order to encourage sustainable shoots?

Eduardo: The call for subsidies by the ICAA last year was the first which granted one point for the measurement of the carbon footprint. This means that you undertook to measure the carbon footprint and that you had to present this measurement on completing the production. This year, the selective subsidies of the ICAA for the production of feature films go one step further, specifying the categories of emissions for which a measurement and record is required, in addition to a sustainability plan which explains which measures are going to be adopted to reduce the environmental impact.

What practical examples could you give of uses in a shoot to make it more sustainable?

Yolanda: Transport, for example, is one of the most important categories of emissions for films. It’s a sector which moves a lot of people daily and this has a huge environmental impact which can be reduced, broadly speaking and without going into much detail, with relatively simple measures: planning well how to share the vehicles to reduce the number of trips, only using efficient vehicles as regards sustainability (hybrid or electric), or applying logistic measures, such as housing the personnel as close as possible to the shoot location, which has a positive environmental impact, reducing the distances travelled.

Energy is another important category of emissions. It’s a sector which also uses a lot, since it has to supply power for a lot of lighting and electronic equipment with high energy consumption but, beyond this, the problem lies in the fact that shoots moreover tend to take place in locations where you can’t connect the supply to the public electricity network. This means that the energy is supplied with traditional fuel generators, as there are hardly any eco-generators in Spain, which has a huge environmental impact. There are many ways of reducing this impact, from using more efficient equipment (which guarantees the lowest consumption) to an investment in eco-generators. In this respect, the involvement of the public administration is important, since the best way to reduce energy-related emissions would be to provide a connection to the public network. We hope to achieve this little by little.

The issue of waste is different, since it hardly has any impact on the carbon footprint of the production, although it does on the environment, so we need to ensure that it is managed adequately, since its impact goes way beyond the shoot (contamination of soil, of water resources...). The main aspect is to free the production from plastics, to prevent paper from being used and to manage hazardous waste appropriately.

Creast is a pioneering company in sustainability specialized in the audiovisual sector. Can you explain how and why it was created?

Eduardo: I’m a director of advertising spots and for 20 years I’ve been shooting above all international campaigns for big brands. I’ve worked in over 20 countries and since I began, regardless of the country in which I was working, I’ve always been struck by the wasted resources in advertising. Always. There is not one job on which I’ve thought that the organization had been humble. First-class flights for 10 people from the agency, the client, the director, the DOP, producers… Accommodation in the best hotels, luxury restaurants, all from one day to the next, with great haste and pressure, a tremendous deployment of resources, if helicopters are needed they have helicopters, if they need to blow up cars they blow up cars…

I began to gather information and I discovered that avoiding this waste implied improving sustainability. Then I began to implement sustainable practices in my shoots, and it went from one extreme to the other. Environmental consultancy companies are composed of environmental specialists who have no idea about films or advertising, who come from big corporations, from the energy industry… Or straight out of university, and they apply general guidelines whether it’s for a film shoot, a dressmaking shop or a big bank. Suddenly, we had someone who didn’t know what we were doing and who wanted to teach a director of photography with 25 years’ experience how to illuminate a set. It could never work.

Therefore, faced with the lack of solutions, we created Creast, which began by improving the sustainability of a shoot that I did in the Canary Islands, in which we were capable of reducing the environmental impact by 80%.

What services does Creast offer companies from the audiovisual sector?

Eduardo: Creast is a technology company, which predict, reduces and measures the carbon footprint of productions automatically and affordably, with the option of offsetting this environmental impact, making carbon neutral productions.

It also helps to fulfil all the sustainability requirements of ICAA and MEDIA in order to obtain subsidies and grants.

It prepares sustainability plans tailor-made for each company, Green Books and all the documentation and materials a company needs to improve its sustainability and prepare a medium-term plan to achieve Net Zero and, finally, Zero emissions, following the guidelines of the United Nations and the IPCC.

There’s a lot of talk about the carbon footprint, but for those people who still don’t know about it, what is it and what does it mean for the environment?

Yolanda: To summarize a lot, our activity generates greenhouse gas emissions: the use of vehicles, the energy we consume, the materials we acquire, the food we eat, etc. There are numerous greenhouse gases, but the most well-known which is taken as the standard is Carbon Dioxide (CO2).

These gases mean that not all of the sun’s rays which enter the atmosphere leave again after being reflected, thus warming the planet. This is a resource of nature to conserve the conditions which allow life, but the continuous and uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases leads to progressive warming with a negative effect. The carbon footprint is normally measured in terms of CO2.

What can an audiovisual company do to be more ecological? What difficulties do you think companies from the sector encounter to be more sustainable?

Yolanda: In very simplified and summarized terms, the audiovisual industry has a high environmental impact and is still at an initial stage of sustainability, so it’s relatively simple to be more ecological. This can be done through the measures mentioned earlier, such as the use of more sustainable transport (bicycles, skates, public transport, hybrid or electric vehicles), and lower energy consumption, using more efficient electronic and lighting equipment, using eco-generators… And also through others such as the introduction of menus with a higher percentage of vegetarian food, or using materials with a 3R policy: reduction, reuse and recycling. This last point also has an important impact, since it’s an industry which needs a lot of furniture, props and costumes.

You’ve created a digital app. What does it consist of and how will it help the audiovisual sector to improve its ecological footprint?

Eduardo: It automates everything we already talked about and makes it simpler and cheaper. Without any prior experience in sustainability, it helps you to achieve the highest standards without making a great effort. Furthermore, as it’s based on Big Data, it allows everything to be precisely quantified and it enables you to compare your sustainability efficiency with the market average, in order to know how you’re doing in relation to everyone else - what is known as benchmarking.

What does the official sustainability certificate accredit and how is it obtained?

Eduardo: Creast certifies that the best sustainability standards are fulfilled, verifying the application of best practices and measuring the environmental impact in a rigorous manner, following the methodology and protocols of official organizations, such as MITECO, with evidence and traceability of the data.

Creast provided sustainability advice to the gala of the Goya Awards. What did it consist of and what was the result of the experience? Can you explain some practical cases which were applied to the gala to make it more sustainable?

Yolanda: We were very lucky to be able to participate in the last gala of the Goya Awards providing advice to the Academy on sustainability, and measuring the event’s carbon footprint. When we began to work, the Academy was already very much aware of the issue and had introduced its own sustainability measures, so the collaboration was very easy in that respect. They were always very receptive.

The objective was to reduce the carbon footprint generated and subsequently to offset it. Thanks to the sustainability measures applied, the greenhouse gas emissions arising from mobility were reduced by 55%, those from catering by 40% and those from waste by 12%.

As for specific measures, for example mobility was almost entirely green since 90% of those attending used the train as the main means of transport. They also reached agreements with local transport companies in Valencia for all the vehicles used by the organization to be hybrid or electric. To reduce mobility, hotels were selected which were close to Les Arts, most of them also with their own sustainability policies.

All the measures adopted prevented the emission of over 100 tonnes of greenhouse gases.