Finding inspiration in fighting climate change can be a challenging task. However, in the recent years, we observe various different initiatives taking place all over the world.
Even in the film-making and streaming industry, positive change is more than visible. While the users of popular streaming sites become more and more aware of their consumption habits and the impact they have on the environment, businesses are increasingly considering a shift towards a more eco-friendly path of content-creation.
Secoya Eco-tournage, a French initiative, aimed at promoting environmentally-positive production of audio-visual content and promoting reducing environmental costs of movie-making, is definitely an initiative worth following and supporting.
Here at Green Stream, we are proud to be able to cooperate and receive advice from the founders and creators of Secoya.
We present you an interview with Mathieu Delahousse (co-founder and president of Secoya) and Maxime Blondel (venture builder at The Family).
« Parce que l’attention que nous portons à la fabrication et à la diffusion de nos films répond à vos engagements personnels, nous vous accompagnons aussi pour agir dans votre quotidien »
"Because the reason that we care about the production and diffusions of our films, answers to your personnal comitment,s we also accompany you to act in your daily life"
(Mathieu Delahousse)
In order to create our service, we had to start from a very simple problem: to what extent can streaming services help build a greener internet?
Our assumption was that it is possible to create a carbon-neutral streaming service, at the condition that there is a concrete shift from within the streaming industry.
We have conducted our research and investigation through three main medias: first, we have made some extensive research on the topic in order to grasp the full extent of it. Then, based on those researches, we have decided to do something more investigative and immersive: tracking our own consumption of streaming and calculate our streaming carbon footprint. Finally, to truly create a viable service we have decided to look at pre-existing initiative such as Ecosia or the plantation of trees by the pornographic website Pornhub. We have also looked at the initiative of Secoya Eco Tournage that we talked about in the video and this has led us to interrogate its co-founder and director Matthieu Delahousse who has kindly accepted to answer us and has fully supported the project. Therefore, he did not only explain his company but provided us with figures, documents and gave us a realistic insight on the initiatives we could be able to undertake and agreed to develop a partnership with us.
Our project really began when we realized that streaming services where harmful to the environment thanks to studies led by the think-tank The Shift Project and Greenpeace. In 2018, online video traffic produced over 300 million tons of CO2 which is as much as Spain. From here, we have tried to find more specific data to assess our own consumption.
However, we quickly became aware that the digital threat was not the only one. However, we did not know how to tackle it and that is why we decided to interview Matthieu Delahousse. Secoya has, for instance, worked on projects where they send an eco-manager and an-eco assistant that will help the entire cast and crew undertake all the necessary measures to cut their CO2 emissions and reduce waste. They work on energies: trying to move from petrol or diesel cars to electric cars, trying to reduce the use of high-consumption lightbulbs as well as production and consumption: local producers, reducing coffee and food waste.
Finally, we have worked with Maxime Blondel, the co-founder of many digital start-ups such as Animation Evenements, and The Young Economy which crashed a few years ago. He has given us insights on what constitutes a good startup, what is ultimately going to fail and how to present our start-up. He was the one who advised us to look at things that already existed to make sure that it was doable.
In conclusion, to answer our research question, yes it is possible to build a greener internet with streaming services. Because we did not witness any real shift from within the streaming industry we thought that it was our responsibility to create one. We are not saying the project will not be probably costly and difficult, but it can be done, and it should be done.
