Picture three scenes: in a sheltered clearing, a stand of trees stretches skyward, trunks pale against the dark soil, leaves dappling the ground like golden dollar coins. In another, a maelstrom of white flakes is carried in eddies by the wind. In a third, sheer cliffs are slick with snow, icicles hanging like shards of glass.
Scenes like these have formed the visual signature for onscreen adaptations of the Lord of the Rings, including Amazon’s latest, monster-budget offering, The Rings of Power. That association has helped form the bedrock of a decade of New Zealand tourism campaigns, showcasing the country’s pristine environments to the world.
But the tree trunks in this clearing are not part of Aotearoa’s 9m hectares of native forest – they are carved polystyrene. The thousands of scattered leaves are woven polyester. The soil is actually a mess of plastic and bark chips. The white flakes are shaved polystyrene. And the cliffs were soon to be crushed into fragments and taken to landfill: one of a multitude of set-pieces trashed and dumped in the wake of major film productions.
Workers involved in Amazon’s The Rings of Power as well as other international studio productions in New Zealand say that behind the glamour and cashflow the industry is touted for lie serious concerns about its enormous environmental impact, including emissions and waste, partly underwritten by New Zealand’s government. They say the true size of that environmental cost is typically hidden from the public: by studio walls, and because some crew members are afraid to speak out because they risk being blacklisted for raising concerns.
The Guardian reviewed on-set photographs, internal communications, and interviewed six production workers on condition of anonymity, including four who worked on Rings of Power and others who worked on other major productions and were familiar with the processes. Those interviewed said they believed the industry could, and should do better – and the New Zealand government could be doing more to regulate the environmental impact of film productions.
“I’m speaking out because I like film. I like working in film, I want to continue in the industry, but not in the way it is currently,” says Andi*, who worked on the Rings of Power and other major international-studio film productions. “It’s appalling what’s happening, and most people don’t know about it,” they said. “If people knew how destructive the whole business is, they would think twice.”
“If huge corporations want to come to this country and use the beauty that’s here, [there’s a duty] to preserve the beauty,” says Joe*, who worked on multiple large productions. “They’re getting tax cuts, and then we’re left with all their trash. It’s heartbreaking. I feel like New Zealanders are being completely taken advantage of.”
“Compared to our colleagues abroad, New Zealand is not even trying,” says Sam*, an industry worker who has been employed on major international film productions across New Zealand and abroad.
Mountains of waste
Leaked internal communications from The Rings of Power’s sustainability team, which was fully appointed almost a year into the production in January 2021, indicate the team was struggling to get to grips with the size of the problem. “The environmental impact of this industry, and of this show, is enormous,” one memo to staff reads. After holding discussions with the crew, they write, “every single person we spoke to is concerned about the environmental impact”.
By July 2021, they write, the first season of the show, which is equivalent to around three to four films, had generated roughly 14,387 tonnes of carbon dioxide – five times what the British Film Commission estimates an average “tentpole”, or blockbuster, film would produce. Calculating how much waste the production had sent to landfill was more difficult – the team notes their figures won’t capture the total waste, as the company was using “multiple vendors” and “we still have a lot yet to count”.
One vendor reported collecting 11,433 cubic metres of landfill waste so far that season – about four-and-a-half Olympic-size swimming pools. A second collected 30.5 cubic metres of soft plastic and 1,885 cubic metres of landfill waste. A third reported having collected 355.5 tonnes of landfill waste – the weight of around 25 London double-decker buses.
The team had success with some initiatives: recycling office paper waste and batteries, installing an electric vehicle charging station at each studio, introducing re-usable water bottles, encouraging crew to eat vegetarian one day a week, and working with local disposal companies to compost or recycle 3,490 cubic metres of waste – but the scale of disposal remained enormous. As estimates were calculated only up to July 2021, final figures would likely be higher, with wrap and post-production work continuing until the start of 2022.
New Zealand has fought hard to attract and retain major international productions. But crew members described waste disposal practices on many local sets as “insane,” “horrendous,” “sad,” and “embarrassing”.
Workers say that while some sets were shipped offshore for re-use, others were trashed. Large quantities of contaminated waste were sent to landfill – much of which the workers believe could have been avoided with planning to minimise contamination and recycle materials.
“On the Rings of Power, these massive ice walls and rock wall set pieces – they get smashed into a million pieces,” Andi says. “If anyone went and sat outside one of these big productions and saw how many skip bins are going out every day … Truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of polystyrene and timber and all the rest of it, mixed up in plastic … and really just thrown into a hole in the ground,” they said.
As the season wrapped, the sustainability team wrote that their work so far had been “largely diagnostic”. “As we figure out what’s going on, we can identify the issues and figure out how things might be done differently moving forward,” they wrote. “Next season, we can do things right from the outset.” Those changes, if they occur, will come too late for New Zealand – the production has left, opting to film season two in the UK.
A spokesperson for Amazon declined to respond on-record to individual questions on the specifics of the production’s final carbon footprint, waste footprint, disposal of sets, water use, or waste disposal practices. They said in a written statement that “Sustainability practices in New Zealand for the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power either met or exceeded industry standards, even during the height of the pandemic,” and “the production made every effort to be a good corporate citizen and was compliant with New Zealand environmental laws and regulations”.
They said sustainability staff had “enabled the production to successfully achieve a carbon footprint that was lower than industry benchmarks”, but declined to add to their statement what the final carbon footprint was or what industry benchmarks they measured it against.
The spokesperson said the company had worked with local vendors who “helped the production donate water from stage tanks to the local fire department, plastics … for agricultural fencing, and divert many other production materials for community donation, reuse, and recycle.”
An industry-wide problem
While Rings of Power is the largest-budget and highest-profile example, workers say it reflects wider problems, and workers contracted to other large, international studio productions in New Zealand make similar criticisms about their practices.
Those issues have haunted the international industry for some time. The Producer’s Guild of America has called on the industry to face up to its “massive carbon footprint, producing millions of metric tons of CO2 per year,” and said that the “sustainability measures currently being taken in our industry are sporadic and wholly inadequate”. The British Film Institute and Bafta have calculated the average “tentpole” film generates 2,840 tonnes of CO2 during production, equivalent to 11 one-way trips from the Earth to the moon.
“Working on film sets … was when I really discovered just the magnitude of the waste,” says Emellie O’Brien, founder of environmental consultancy Earth Angel, that works with major international productions. “We obviously construct these massive sets, we shoot in them for a few days sometimes, then we tear them all down – and typically, that’s going into a dumpster.”
In New Zealand, some workers claimed concerns and suggestions they raised for how to decrease waste and emissions on-set fell on deaf ears, or appeared to be seen as a hindrance to hitting deadlines. Others said they were afraid to raise concerns, fearing possible dismissal or blacklisting.
“If you’re the one … trying to speak up about things like this, you become known as a trouble maker,” said Andi.
Another worker, Joe, expressed concern about other possible repercussions such as “getting fired, getting blacklisted” and that if that happened it “means nobody will hire you again”.
New Zealand’s “Hobbit Law” – lobbied for by Peter Jackson and a number of Lord of the Rings production members in 2010 – means even full-time film workers are broadly treated as independent contractors, so cannot bring grievance cases for unfair dismissal. Precarious employment can add to the intensely high-pressure, competitive environments of film sets, where the priority is completing projects on-time and on-budget.
Zena Harris, the president and founder of Green Spark consultancy, said film workers “work in an environment with a very narrow focus and complete hierarchy and domination. And so they don’t have, necessarily, the freedom to speak up.”
“If you go on to any production right now and spend a few minutes with the crew, they will tell you exactly what’s wrong or exactly what could be done better from a sustainability perspective – if only they had the time … had the backing of their supervisor or had a bit of budget,” says Harris.
While some productions now appoint sustainability officers, crew members say they often lack authority to change practices, especially if they are not integrated from the outset. At worst, Sam says, they could become exercises in greenwashing.
Workers and international experts also say those dedicated sustainability teams should be embedded from the outset of production to be effective. “Having someone responsible purely for sustainability, who’s there right from the start, should be mandatory, at least for productions of a certain size,” Ali, a worker on Rings of Power, says.
The environmental impact of film productions was particularly grating for some crew members given the enormous investment by the New Zealand government. “We’re giving hundreds of millions of dollars in hard-earned tax money to these goliaths,” Andi says. “It’s our cost,” says Joe – both environmentally and financially.
Linking subsidies to sustainability
New Zealand has some of the most generous film subsidies in the world, underwriting up to 25 cents of every dollar spent by big in-country productions. In 2021, economic development minister Stuart Nash told parliament the government expected to fork out another $1bn over the next five years. In the case of The Rings of Power, if in-country costs reached the estimated budget of $650m, New Zealand would pay around $130m.
“People are flocking to certain production hubs to film in those areas, because of the very lucrative film incentives that exist,” consultancy founder O’Brien says. “And so there’s been talk around: well, we’re already giving people a 20% or 25% rebate on their spend in these territories – what if there were also some type of incentive linked to sustainability efforts?”
While they’re still rare, some incentives for improving environmental practices appear effective. Vancouver introduced a 50% discount on filming permits if productions reduced their use of diesel generators – switching instead to battery power or plugging into the grid. Harris says about 30% of productions have taken it up. Studios producing for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, UKTV, Sky, TG4 or Netflix in the UK must calculate and report their production’s carbon footprint via Albert Sustainable Production Certification. While Amazon has made its own Climate Pledge, Amazon Productions is not listed among Albert’s affiliates, and nothing similar to that certification scheme is in effect in New Zealand.
New Zealand was “absolutely” lagging on developing standardised sustainability practices – around a decade behind the UK, which developed reporting structures in 2011, says Craig Gainsborough, of industry sustainability organisation Greenlit. “As a whole, our domestic industry doesn’t have any monitoring and reporting of carbon, waste, or emissions,” he says, and currently only about 5-7% of New Zealand-based productions monitor their carbon footprint.
Gainsborough says while it is “easy to point the finger” at the big productions, it is New Zealand’s responsibility to create standards and meaningfully empower sustainability teams. “Those measures needed to be embedded from the outset of productions,” he says. “Individual people within the industry … care about it, but there’s no oversight.”
Asked in early October about concerns about the climate or environmental impact of growing New Zealand-based film productions, the arts, culture and heritage minister, Carmel Sepuloni said: “I haven’t received any briefings recently to tell me that we’re behind or ahead [of other countries]… we as a government and also the film sector do need to be mindful of that though.”
Sepuloni said the government was reviewing New Zealand’s film incentives – and she expected some people would “want to provide feedback around environmental impacts”. When the 56-page consultation document was released in late October, however, government suggestions for reform made no mention of climate change, waste disposal, emissions, incentives for sustainable productions or penalties for environmental damage.
Sepuloni declined to be interviewed or respond directly to questions on the environmental impact of the Rings of Power, referring questions to the economic and regional development minister, Stuart Nash. A spokesperson for Nash’s office said in a statement that he “cannot comment on the amount of environmental waste created by an individual production” but screen production grants require recipients “to follow the laws of New Zealand”. With a review of the screen production grants under way, they said: “We welcome input on environmental sustainability. Based on public response, this may be considered as part of final advice.”
Without action from government, an industry-wide commitment, or greater public pressure on the studios themselves, workers believe the status quo will continue.
“The current situation is proof of that,” says Sam. “If there’s no legislation, accountability or consumer demand? Exactly nothing happens.”
*All workers’ names have been changed to protect their identities