Saving The Environment Or How To Buy Off Your Guilt

Shots is reporting that Instant Karma Films have produced the first ever carbon neutral commercial. The spot is for Maybelline New York and stars Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon actress Zhang Ziyi. The shoot was done in Shanghai and the production company dontated to carbon fund.org and ‘sponsored the planting of 1000 trees across America the carbon produced during filming’.

CSR Wire’s coverage continues the story saying, ‘The trees are planted through American Forests, the nation's oldest nonprofit citizens' conservation organization and a world leader in planting trees for environmental restoration.’

"We think it is about making the right choices were you can and when you can't you offset our carbon output by donating to organizations such as Carbonfund.org and American Forests who are working to reduce climate change through their environmental programs" said Tanya Farkas, Instant Karma Films' president. She continued "So, if we can encourage others in the industry to start with the first step and offset their carbon output that is a great start."

What do I think? I am torn. There are great advantages to this approach. Obviously, there are a lot of benefits to offsetting carbon and planting trees, but I can’t for the life of me think of why there aren’t more efforts to change the way we operate our businesses. It is a very, do what you like, just donate money and it will be fine. Lets say Apple computers uses slave labour in Asia to produce its computers (not too unbelievable) but if they offset the impact by donating large corporate sized sums of cash to Unicef it surely makes it ok. Right? This is a dangerous philosophy that allows companies to continue their business practices whether they are destructive or not and buy pro-planet PR as well as a clear conscience. I don’t know anything about the practices of Instant Karma Films. From their site, they do appear to be a very conscientious company. What I would look to see in an article about an environmentally friendly production is not that they gave back to a charity, but rather the practises employed by the company to limit the impact on the environment. I have been thinking about this in terms of post facilities and am eagerly awaiting a one to take the plunge. Tapeless workflow, paperless production flow, energy saving initiatives (god knows we use enough of it in the industry). These combined with efforts to be carbon neutral are the stories that would wow me.