As a major cultural and business force in California, Toronto and Vancouver, Hollywood has long been committed to Greening its business practices. Kudos to them. It’s hard to miss Ed Begley Jr. or Discovery Channel’s commitment to covering Hollywood green issues. As a small business here in Vancouver I’ve helped as much as possible to make the Crew Gifts practice (celebrating and thanking TV & Movie crews post-production) as Green as possible.
One of the easiest practices is to source 100-Mile Swag — products made, warehoused, decorated and/or delivered within a 100 Mile radius of the TV or Movie production. I spoke briefly about it in an August 2009 Post in this blog. But as today is Blog Action Day 2009 I felt it was time to say it again.
Producers on such films as Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the A-Team (remake of venerable 1980s TV series) continue to ask for Metal Water bottles so they can reduce waste on set. We’ve shipped over 5,000 of these bottles to different productions in the past 18 months. All the bottles are warehoused and decorated in Vancouver, total shipping distance less than 20 miles.
Another great example is that we were contacted by one of the biggest movies in the world (sorry can’t name it at this point, still in production). They had found in our online catalogue a great Umbrella they wanted 700 units of. The warehouse was in Montreal requiring a 2300 Mile shipment. With a little digging I found the EXACT same model at Vancouver Umbrella and the producer was very happy to use a local source. Total shipment: 10 miles.
At PBJ Merch Co. we will continue to work with Hollywood North and our clients to make the swag sourcing practice as green as possible. Ask us if you’d like help on 100-Mile swag. To see more Hollywood productions we’ve worked with see this post from 2009.
Disclosure: so many consumer and b-2-b products are made overseas currently so true 100-Mile sourcing is difficult. Many of the products discussed here did originate in Asian factories and are warehoused in North America. In this global economic context we are committed to working as green as possible.