The Chicago film industry is working toward sustainability

From The Bear to The Blues Brothers, Chicago is an entertainment industry town that generates an annual $700 million in economic impact across 50 wards and sustains approximately 20,000 jobs. But along with the success of jobs, money, and production comes a heaping amount of environmental waste.

For people not fine-tuned to the entertainment world, it may not seem like an obvious culprit. But the film industry in Los Angeles, for example, has a greater impact on pollution in the city than aerospace manufacturing, clothing production, or the hotel industry.

On average, movie sets generate 72 tons of food waste, often including large amounts of plastic just from water bottle usage. Then, there’s chemical waste from developing film and energy consumption from lighting. Planes and transportation taken by crew members and actors all contribute to a large carbon footprint, according to a 2006 study at the University of California, Los Angeles. The list goes on. 

However, in recent years, there’s been an uptick in people taking charge of creating zero-waste sets, with Hollywood films like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and Girls Trip (2017) ensuring sustainable production. The Spider-Man film documented its work on X (formerly Twitter) under the handle @EcoSpidey. The filmmakers ultimately won the Green Seal award from the Environmental Media Association for their efforts. And Girls Trip diverted 600 pounds of catering food from their set to feed 500 homeless people in New Orleans. 

Cities like New York and Los Angeles tend to be more watchful of their impact; however, Chicago’s waste has fallen under the radar. With the third-largest movie and recording workforce in the country, Chicago doesn’t have as many sustainability companies as either coast, resulting in fewer actionable initiatives for future greener production. 

Ellen Domonkos White, the founder of Ecofixr, the first Chicago-based sustainability company, says, “There are a few possible reasons why the midwest/Chicago film industry has underreported sustainability data. First, many productions either do not incorporate sustainability efforts or fail to measure those efforts. Additionally, studios tracking their initiatives often do not release data specific to Chicago-based productions.”

White has more than 15 years of experience in the entertainment industry. In her work, she noticed that valuable resources were being tossed into landfills, so she started researching whether anything was being done to resolve the issue. From there, she discovered that people like her mentor, Kris Barberg, who runs the LA-based company EcoSet, have been actively working to help the industry for years. 

She decided it was time for the Second City to adopt this standard, too. “I wanted to make a difference for the industry and the future of my son and other budding filmmakers,” says White. 

A new survey published by Ecofixr says that a single day of tentpole production—shooting a high-budget, high-profile film or television show—can generate 33 metric tons of carbon dioxide, enough to fill seven Olympic swimming pools. 

Local companies that work with Ecofixr have experienced resource recovery. “We’ve rescued substantial food and materials to give back to the community,” explains White. “Two other major initiatives we’ve been advocating for are eliminating single-use plastics and adopting clean energy. There are many excellent alternatives to diesel generators, and we’re excited to see them starting to be integrated on set.” 

One such collaborator is Filmscape Chicago, an educational nonprofit that works with filmmakers and folks in the television and production community, offers classes year-round, and hosts an annual event in June at CineCity Studios. The event is one weekend of free classes and exhibits on a range of topics. In 2024, they had workshops on virtual set lighting as well as a cinematography panel from crew members on The Bear.

Ned McGregor, the board president of Filmscape, says that with film, you only shoot once, and then it’s done. “The nature of film is that, today, we need to be here, and so we build that set, and we’re never coming back. So, OK, what happens to that set?”

And in television, on a day-to-day basis, there can be one hundred people on a show, depending on the size of the production. Beyond the camera work, there are hairstylists, prop people, grips, makeup artists, set dressers, truck drivers, electricians, painters, and swing gangs. “There’s gotta be food for these folks,” says McGregor. “There are trailers for offices, trailers for bathrooms—every department has a trailer with its stuff in it.”

And each of these trailers has a generator, oftentimes gas, attached to it. “So, that’s a lot of fuel that’s being consumed. It’s all very significant,” he says. 

At last year’s Filmscape annual event, sessions discussed green options for production. McGregor says that on the exhibiting show floor, folks showed off high-amp-hour batteries and energy-efficient lighting.

“Everything’s moving towards LED in the lighting world, and so it’s much more possible to run that in a battery scheme than it was ten years ago when everything was more what you think of as an ‘old-school’ light bulb. So it’s becoming a lot more feasible for the whole production,” says McGregor. 

Since Filmscape is a nonprofit and not a production company, its event waste is a little different from what occurs on film or TV sets. Still, for their show in 2024, they partnered with Ecofixr on a green initiative. 

“We did the lowball stuff pretty quickly. We used to have paper programs, but we moved to an app environment. So we’re not just printing out a lot of materials that are thrown away. We had recycling on site,” McGregor explains. 

Filmscape also partnered with Liquid Death, a canned water company, to avoid single-use plastic. The event’s food trucks offered vegetarian and low-meat options, since livestock in the U.S. produces 3.2 million metric tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. A 2024 Food & Water Watch fact sheet wrote that this number is comparable to driving around the equator 28 million times.

The original plan for the event included electric power for the entire weekend, but due to an equipment issue, Filmscape was forced to run on diesel. For future events, like this year, they plan to have exclusively battery power. 

An overall worry for some in the entertainment industry is cost-effectiveness. McGregor says, “If we go electric, we don’t have fuel costs.” 

Fuel is a significant expense for Filmscape, as they run for three entire days on generators. On average, one diesel generator can cost $200 a day. “That’s nothing for a production, but we’re a tiny nonprofit,” he says. 

Core SWX, a New York- and LA-based company that makes batteries and power products for filmmaking, has a cost comparison for its newest battery product, MoXIE Solo ($6,495). Its 2.5-hour charge time only costs 89 cents. In comparison, a Honda 3000 gasoline generator ($2,000) consumes 0.479 gallons of fuel per hour and costs $1.79. A fuel generator will consume, on average, around 20 gallons of diesel per 12 hours. Film sets vary in how many generators they need, but a commercial film set typically requires two, and big productions could include 20 or more. Moreover, gas generators have a noise level of 73 decibels, similar to a washing machine. Therefore, they need to be placed further away on set for sound and air quality. 

Most green initiatives, no matter the industry, come with an up-front price tag. “It is always going to be more expensive to have options that aren’t just putting everything in a trash bag at the end of the day. It is more difficult to sort through waste,” McGregor says. 

In 2024, the Sundance Institute came to Chicago with three days of programming across four locations in the city. During the weekend, they worked toward eliminating single-use plastics, increasing food donations, and opting out of booking first-class flights for events. Working with a 91 percent waste diversion rate, the Sundance Institute was able to compost, recycle, or reuse 200 pounds of waste. They saved 40 pounds of food, which was used for 34 meals. 

Nevertheless, the event still produced 32.14 metric tons of carbon emissions, showing how much more work still needs to be done.  

But hard work requires a starting point, no matter how painful or expensive. White says, “By making eco-conscious decisions from the outset, you’ll not only achieve better results and reduce costs by addressing inefficiencies but also integrate sustainability into each department’s decisions and foster a culture of environmental awareness among the cast and crew.”

We know Chicago as a TV town, with NBC’s Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. notoriously filmed here. But it’s also a huge location for commercials and smaller production companies. McGregor says that because these companies made investments in diesel generators, which were more available when they started, it’s been difficult for them to change moving forward. 

McGregor says that a big shift will happen once smaller production companies embrace the change from diesel to battery, but he knows change like this doesn’t happen overnight. 

And, of course, going green isn’t always as straightforward as going electric. There are power issues, as film sets need high power outputs over a long period of time for batteries. There are also larger concerns about still using fossil fuels to generate electricity and human rights violations that occur while using fossil fuels to produce lithium batteries.

That’s why White and McGregor are both working together and separately to educate folks about where to even begin and how to make sustainability a reality on set.

“For those ready to make a serious commitment to improving their processes, start at the very beginning of planning. Make sure your budget includes sustainability considerations, particularly allocating funds to hire someone to manage sustainability efforts,” advises White. 

Things seem to be changing in Chicago. On March 27, Ecofixr, the Independent Film Alliance, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Chicago Film Office, the Chicago Department of Environment and Sustainability, and One Earth Collective hosted the Sustainability Now! Summit + Expo. The event was focused on educating filmmakers on reducing environmental impacts without digging too deep into their pockets, with keynote speakers, clean-energy demonstrators, and industry leaders, including a video speech from actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. and his daughter, Hayden Carson Begley.

On April 25, Kinowerks, Ecofixr, and midwest photographer and storyteller Jason Lindsey will host the Green Frame: Sustainable Filmmaking for a Changing World at Kinowerks Studio to inspire more local environmental workflows. 

These events signal the larger-scale shift in how Chicago filmmaking is becoming a little more green. Ecofixr is kicking off a conversation that’s crucial to the future of Chicago’s standards and how we can keep up with our competitors on both coasts. 

“As the old saying goes, ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure,’” White says, “which underscores the need for more reporting on sustainability efforts within our local industry.”