31 Mar 15

Online tools helping to make TV industry more sustainable

albert-logo-new-blue-2xalbert and albert+, the pioneering sustainability assessment tools for the film and television industry, are enabling production companies across the UK and internationally to reduce the carbon footprint of their productions. 

The online tools, developed through a partnership between the BAFTA Albert Consortium and Greenstone, are being used by the four main UK broadcasters – Channel 4, BBC, ITV and Sky - to work with production partners to make significant reductions in the environmental impact of their programmes. 

In March 2014, the BAFTA Albert Consortium partnered with Greenstone to redevelop their existing carbon calculator, albert. Working closely with the Consortium, Greenstone’s in house development team relaunched the online platform to enhance its usability and analytical functionality, to ensure the data captured was relevant and useful for the industry.

Since the relaunch of albert in June 2014, there has been an overwhelming uptake. albert now has 277 production companies as active users and the carbon footprints of over 700 productions have been calculated through the solution.

albert+, an additional tool to assess a production according to a set of green production guidelines, was launched at the beginning of this year as an industry certification scheme. albert+ is already recognised as an industry standard and many TV productions have been awarded Sustainable Production certifications and star ratings by reporting through the tool. 

All major broadcasters are taking steps to green their commissions and the use of these reporting tools has enabled them to recognise and reward best practice and set environmental commitments with its production partners.

It was recently announced that, through the use of albert+, Sky and Freshwater Films were able to reduce the environmental impact of the production of the latest series of Ross Kemp’s Extreme World by 20%. In a recent video, Ross Kemp describes albert+ as an ‘invaluable tool on a continuous journey to make our production more sustainable’.[1]

Matthew de Villiers, CEO at Greenstone, comments ‘Greenstone has been providing software solutions and supporting services to organisations and industry bodies globally for the past eight years. We are excited to be part of this rapid movement towards environmental sustainability in the television and film industry. It is great to see that reporting through albert and albert+ is helping to drive best practice in this sector and we look forward to watching and supporting albert grow globally.’ 

For further information on Greenstone's software solutions and services, please contact us

To find out more about albert and albert+, visit the BAFTA website

 

Environment