Carbon Footprints

The Adelaide Film Festival launched on Friday with the announcement that it will be Australia’s first CO₂ free™ film festival

The 2007 Adelaide Film Festival will lead the way as the first CO₂ free™ film festival in Australia, thanks to the support of Carbon Planet. Reflecting their innovative and ground-breaking style, the AFF are keen to explore ways that filmmakers and media content creators can practice what they preach and lower their CO₂ footprint.

What does it mean to be CO₂ free™?

First up ‘CO₂ free™’ is a registered trademark of Carbon Planet, so there are strict rules that apply when using the CO₂ free mark.

• You must have been audited by an appropriate body, and
• you must have made a commitment to behavioural and structural changes to reduce carbon emissions, and
• you must offset what you can not actually reduce using properly certified carbon credits.

It’s an ongoing commitment to work with us, or some other properly certified team, to continuously reduce the carbon footprint of the company, event or products being branded CO2 free™.

By making it stand out as a registered trade mark, I believe we have the best chance of raising the bar for many players and making the mark actually mean something. By comparison, the term “carbon neutral” was trademarked by The Carbon Neutral Company, formerly Future Forests, but the term has become to represent something far too vague to become a decent brand. There is no specific definition of carbon neutrality.

I am very proud that the Adelaide Film Festival chose to make their event CO₂ free™. As part of our involvement with the AFF we’ll be running an audience award so if you are in Adelaide over the event please collect your voting slips from any AFF venue.

Another initiative being pushed heavily at the festival is the Green Code for Film Makers. The AFF is running a Planet Greencode forum to brainstorm ideas about how filmmakers can come together to establish a voluntary, international GreenCode for the Screen Industries and make media that has no environmental impact. Simple behavioural changes we all can make in our offices, production processes and offsetting carbon emissions in filmmaking will all be explored. Planet Greencode will be facilitated by Peter Wintonick, feature Dave Sag (me) and be presented in association with the Australian International Documentary Conference.

The Planet Greencode forum is on Thursday 22 February at 5pm at the Mercury Cinema, Morphett Street, Adelaide. — DS

Technorati Tags: Adelaide Film Festival, Carbon Planet, climate change, emissions reduction, film, global warming, Green Code

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 7:25 am and is filed under Carbon Planet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.