If you happen to check out any of NBC Universal’s channels or web sites this week, you’re sure to be bowled over by the green messaging: green logos, green-themed PSAs, even green-centered plots on your favorite shows (Al Gore comes to 30 Rock!).
It’s “Green Week,” and Green Is Universal, the network’s two-and-a-half year old initiative to raise green awareness across all of it’s various brands — from the old-school, Jay Leno-anchored NBC network, to Bravo, SyFy, and Universal Pictures — goes full-throttle with a slate of easy-to-use tips to make your life a little more environmentally friendly, straight through Sunday Nov. 22. But Tonic readers will be happy to know that the “greening” of NBC goes far beyond consumer messaging — even beyond the apt color of Tina Fey’s scarf (right).
“We’re walking the talk,” says Beth Colleton, Vice President of Green is Universal. And she means it.
As of 2009, every single television show in the NBC universe has been asked to live up to the Green 17 — a list of 17 green production principals from recycling to eliminating the use of bottled water. “As of last week,” says Colleton, “all of our shows were upwards of 87- to 89-percent complete on their goals.”
In fact, Tina Fey and the 30 Rock gang were way ahead of the curve: As one of NBC’s (and perhaps all of television’s) greenest shows, the show moved beyond the Green 17 in 2009 and is working to expand recycling efforts and lessen their environmental impact overall. They’ll get plenty of helpful advice from a cutting-edge, brand-new TV Production Guide that Green Is Universal recently produced — a how-to guide for “going green” aimed at every member of any TV show’s crew, from lighting, to construction, to costuming and craft services.
“We wanted this to be an absolutely tactical, trench-driven play-by-play for the people in production,” Colleton says, “targeted on the specific functions that take place on a set.”
The guide is detailed, delving into everything from hotel selection on locations to using energy-saving computer settings to production-office functions. For example, it goes beyond the obvious suggestion of utilizing electronic distribution instead of printing on paper. Recognizing that paper printouts of some things are just a necessity of life on a set, the Production Guide suggests workers use specific fonts that use less ink.
The increasingly green culture at NBC-Universal extends beyond television, too. On the corporate side, the real-life 30 Rock — the company’s landmark 30 Rockefeller Center building in midtown Manhattan — has a closed-loop recycling program in place that turns the company’s paper waste into thousands of useful CD/DVD sleeves.
On the film side, last summer’s Away We Go, starring John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, provided the studio’s first green production case study, which led to an entirely separate Green Production Guide for film.
The latest example of those green principles at work? Zac Efron’s new film, Charlie St. Cloud, due out next year, did away with all bottled water on the set. “Moving to 5-gallon jugs and filtration systems over a 50-day production schedule,” says Colleton, “eliminated more than 20,000 bottles from the waste stream.”
By eliminating bottled water on NBCU’s 29 TV shows going forward, Colleton expects to keep 1.5 million water bottles out of landfills.
“A lot of times the act might seem small,” says Colleton — who ran corporate responsibility for the NFL for 15 years before coming to NBCU — “but when you apply it across all of our films, all of our TV shows and our greater operations, the results can be massive.”
No kidding.
Green is Universal will be pumping out two more production guides in the coming weeks: One aimed at the news division, another aimed at third-party producers who air shows on the company’s networks. And next month, Colleton and crew are teaming up with the NRDC to release a Green is Universal Employee Office Guide with tips she hopes will follow workers from their desks through their commutes and on into their lives at home. “When it comes to the environment,” she says, “a lot of people are just looking for ideas and instruction.”
Who would’ve guessed that a network/tv-and-film studio would emerge as a leader in filling that need?
Tina Fey photo by Jeffrey Ufberg/Getty Images.
Zac Efron photo courtesy of nicogenen via Flickr.