Green ideas hit Hollywood and the 2010 Emmy Awards

There’s no question that the entertainment industry generates a lot of waste from printing scripts or even shooting on location. After Conan O’Brien walked away from the Tonight Show, NBC gutted his $50 million dollar set that he used for just seven months. Others in Hollywood are actually getting the message about being green which has changed a lot of productions like film Inception as well as tonight’s Emmy Awards.

When you think of the Emmy Awards, you think of the ceremony but not the work done behind the scenes. Blurbs have to be written for the presenters, the venue needs to scrubbed clean, and workers need to grab some lunch. All of that adds up to waste in the form of paper, disposable plates, plastic water bottles, and much more.

Organizers of this year’s Emmys decided that they’d take a different route and employed some green and inherently frugal ideas. Craft service tables were stocked with locally grown food and reusable tablecloths. Office staff used dry erase boards instead of gigantic paper pads and were encouraged to use digital editions of their paperwork whenever possible. And unlike NBC’s wasteful move with O’Brien’s stage, organizers will utilize rental items instead of building a one-time-use set.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, you may catch Leonardo DiCaprio driving around in his Toyota Prius. The actor isn’t the kind of guy that drives the hybrid just so he can get a cute write-up in People magazine; he’s passionate about the environment and even set up the eco-minded Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation back in 1998. So it’s no wonder that he approached Warner Brothers, the studio that backed Inception, about using solar power on the set.

Film sets are usually home to noisy diesel generators but Warner Brothers decided to rent the world’s largest “Mobile Solar Power System” to power part of the set. Made by Pure Power, the solar arrays track the sun for optimal use and emit about 54 decibels, similar to the noise produced by a normal conversation. Not only did they cut down on noise pollution but they eliminated a ton of carbon emissions every day.

It may take a long time for Hollywood to change their wasteful ways, but any move to conserve energy and eliminate waste can make a difference for the planet and their bottom line. Green ideas are often frugal ideas such as printing on both sides of a sheet of paper or getting free energy from the sun.