BOKASHI COMPOSTING

People tend to be surprised when we say we compost our food waste from set, which we always find …surprising.  While it does require a bit of extra work, it’s far from impossible to create composting solutions on set, at home, or in the office.

Bokashi is an anaerobic composting process that’s been used in Japan for a long time.  We use it on set, and benefit from its no mess, no smell, low maintenance qualities.  Unlike other composting methods, Bokashi composting allows for the renewal of a wide range of organic material, including meat scraps, bones, pet waste, and paper.  The anaerobic process speeds up the composting process, which means more of the NYC waste can be renewed here, within its population-dense local environment.

We heard about all of this from Vandra at Vokashi Kitchen Waste Solutions in Brooklyn.  She owns and operates an incredible Brooklyn-based home and business composting service.  They offer household and business composting collection throughout NYC!  When you sign up for Vokashi, they deliver empty buckets, along with the fermented starter mix necessary for composting.  Once or twice a month, they come back and collect your buckets of compostable waste, leaving new empty buckets with you.   They operate a few different land sites, where they turn your household waste into renewed soil for local use.

Finally, composting made (extremely) easy in NYC!  Thanks Vokashi-  Check out their site to learn more about them and their process. www.vokashi.com

THANK YOU CLEAR SKY CLIMATE SOLUTIONS

Now that we’ve opened our doors, more thanks are in order.  We’d like to introduce and thank ClearSky Climate Solutions for their hard work defining and creating a realistic assessment of our industry’s potential for improving our environmental impact.  We had them create 33 different shoot scenarios, ranging from local shoots in NYC, to far-flung projects in Asia and beyond, to help us estimate specific carbon emissions for each scenario, and each usage category within those scenarios. ( air travel, food waste, water usage, ect)   As initial research, it was an invaluable process, and helped us refine and clarify our current process and practices.  Project Developer Molly White was tirelessly responsive and communicative throughout the process and really tailored the research for our specific requirements.  We assumed an environmentally-conscious approach would have its benefits- but Molly and Clearsky helped us determine exactly where those benefits can best be found.

What did we learn? We learned a lot, but one notable take-away was this: That out of the many wasteful components of any project, air travel represents BY FAR the largest amount of carbon emissions released into our atmosphere.  From an environmental perspective, it seems it’s always better to stay local for a shoot.  When creative necessity makes that impossible, we can at the very least purchase carbon offsets against our flights’ footprints.  It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a good start.  At about $20 per flight, it’s a modest contribution to carbon reduction.