UK Cinema Industry On The Road to Net Zero

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Tim Potter from Trigage attended the UKCA Cinema Industry Conference last week. It was held at the BFI Southbank in the infamous National Film Theatre Screen 1 (NFT1), an auditorium with the most beautiful sound and vision that really shows off the best of classic cinema.

The conference's theme was ‘Growing Audiences’ and was an incredibly positive and upbeat networking event for the cinema industry.

The event opened with Directors and Actors expressing their support for cinemas including Denis Villeneuve thanking operators for their support of Dune 2.

One session in particular spiked our interest and that was on the theme ‘Road To Net Zero’, organised by James Connor, Senior Policy Executive and Project Manager at the UKCA:

‍Felicity Beckett, Head of Green Agenda at Picturehouse, gave an update on their green initiatives. Picturehouse do a great job of raising awareness of environmental issues with their customers including for example making it a 'fun thing' to put your food and drink waste in the right bins.

‍Patrick Hort of Mammoth Climate Action Cinema (and of ePOS supplier Savoy Systems) shared an update on the ever-expanding UK Green Screen Network promoting Environmental films and documentaries in Cinema. A good way to grow audiences is to diversify the content available and green themed titles contribute towards this goal along with raising awareness of issues such as climate change. There is no better place to see a Natural history documentary of say the Amazonian rainforest as on the big screen.

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Finally, Mark Chapman, co-founder of the Zero Carbon Forum, working with the UKCA, provided an update on the UK Cinema industry’s net zero roadmap - a plan that includes measuring CO2e emissions across the cinema network and sharing best practice on how to lower carbon emissions (and ultimately also reduce energy consumption). And interesting snippet from his presentation were that initial CO2e emissions stats suggest that Food and Drink make up 50% of the overall carbon emissions of cinemas.

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More I am sure to follow on all these topics.

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