How to make Wedding Photography Green

It seems I got some Photographer’s knickers in a bunch with a post about how we as wedding photographers and the photography industry in general fail in the realm of environmental responsibility, and how their are a few Photographers that take advantage of the word “Green” in their marketing.
Most of the upset e-mails and comments I got were from photographers that do quite a bit in their lives and business to reduce their carbon footprints. But there were two points that were obviously lost on them:

1. My problem isn’t with those “trying their best”, it’s those that are making claims that they are Green Photographers without anything to back it up. So if you aren’t making those claims, I really don’t understand the animosity.
2. It takes far more energy to bring the “oh so drool worthy” cameras and lenses to our doors, and to power our computers, which we spend the vast majority of our time when we aren’t shooting, than most people even consider.

Solution = Education and Standards

There were a few photographers that brought up a really good point; There is no accountability or standards posed for such claims in the photographic world. Truth be told, there are not many standards out there in the way of promoting your business as “Green.” The only certification program I know of myself is through LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). I know of LEED from my previous career in Architecture.
With a LEED Certified Architect, each client obtains a great deal of education about the importance of the standards and why to utilize certain products over others.
With a certification system for Photographers, we can be assured that Green Photographers meet certain standards themselves and are providing their clients with accurate information, as well as protecting customers.

LEED ranks each building into Silver, Gold and Platinum based on how well they meet certain criteria. So, in the spirit of LEED standards for Green buildings, I propose the following Standards for “Green Photographers.” I would recommend that the PPA (Professional Photographers Association) be the organization to champion this program, as their reach goes out to Photographers of every type, worldwide.

Silver:

• Maintains a home or office that consumes less than 6,600 kW/hrs per year. (This is approximately 25% less than the average household).
• You may use Carbon Offsets to offset up to 15% of the above figure.
• Products offered must be packaged in recycled and recyclable packaging and purchased from U.S. made sources in bulk to reduce shipping.
• Offsets must be purchased for the delivery of products (prints, and albums) from out of area (over 100 miles).
• Purchasing Offsets for your yearly Carbon Footprint (includes car travel, air travel, etc).
• Monthly participation in community events that benefit the environment, (Beach clean-ups, recycling drives, etc.).

Gold:

• Everything from Silver, plus:
• Maintains a home or office that produces less than 4,500 kW/hrs per year. (This is approximately 50% less than the average household).
• You may use Carbon Offsets to offset up to 5% of the above figure.
• Purchase camera equipment and business equipment from Non-Corporate sources within 100 miles of a radius to you. This supports your local economy, and keeps people near you employed. (No mail order).
• Website and Print Fulfillment site run on a Green Hosting company (Solar panels used for electricity, rain-water used for server cooling).
• Track energy usage of your website visitors and purchase Offsets (based on average 150 watt computer * Hours of use on your site / 1000=kW/hr).
• Print orders and albums must be scheduled for monthly delivery to reduce shipping.
• Non-Leather Albums alternatives must be provided for your clients.

Platinum:

• Everything from Gold, plus:
• Place of business shall be either maintain a LEED Platinum, Gold or Silver certification, or meet the requirements for any of those levels.
• Maintains a home or office that produces less than 1,800 kW/hrs per year. (This is approximately 80% less than the average household).
• Offsetting will not be eligible as a substitution in this category. And any additional energy requirements must be provided by non-public energy (i.e. solar panels, personal wind turbines, etc).
• Purchases either only U.S. manufactured cameras, or second hand cameras bought locally.
• Supplies only non-leather albums content from companies utilizing recycled materials, and that source their materials from within a 100 mile radius of their location of manufacture.

*Just a note: There are obviously certain criteria in the Platinum category that will currently be unachievable. This was done on purpose, so we can pressure manufactures to fill in the missing pieces.
And this is obviously skewed towards wedding photographers, some of these would obviously not apply to other photographers, and there would be additional requirements for them as well.

These are just preliminary ideas and thoughts. These of course should be reviewed and discussed with leading Environmentalists, Manufacturers, and Photographers to come to a conclusion on what standards should be adopted for each category. But, I do believe that these are great milestones for anyone in their own business whether or not you care about a certification, and just care about our One Sweet World.

If you have your own thoughts please include them below for others to read. If you are so inclined, I would appreciate if you would use the Share buttons below, pass this along to other photographers, and if you have connections with organizations like PPA, please let them know it’s time to make a difference in our industry.

I really make no claims to be a Green person (I have a tremendous knowledge of it due to my old Architectural life), but as I was researching these last couple articles I have seen for myself that I am a tremendous waster and through this I have made my own resolve to watch my own personal habits and may be incorporating some of these ideas into my own practice. (Don’t worry, I won’t call myself a Green Photographer now).

As a final note, I’d like to thank Green LA Girl whose talk at WordCamp LA on Saturday, is where I received a few ideas that have been incorporated into the different certification levels. Thanks for all the great info Siel.

William Bay is a Standards for Green Photographers.

You see, I grew up surfing in Imperial Beach, which is just a few short miles away from the Tijuana River, I would see it regularly spew out contaminants into the ocean rendering the beaches locked down for fear of Hepatitis outbreaks.
At even that young of an age, I recognized that human beings created a pronounced stress on the natural world and it’s resources and I quickly became a huge proponent of the Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation.

But here’s what annoys me today: Photographers, especially Wedding Photographers, trying to capitalize on the “Green Movement” by claiming that they are “Green Photographers”

I typically reserve the term “Green Washing” for big corporations that say they are “green”, only to promote consumerism by pumping out millions of products in environmentally harmful plastics that mostly end up in landfills. But Photographers are just as bad.
Just because a photographer buys a digital camera doesn’t autteomatically make him/her “Green.”

Digital Photography is not a “magic bullet”

Sure, film has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur. And given the choice, I’d stick with digital anyway; as Vincent Versace, a rather prominent photographer, says: “Film is what you get on your teeth when you don’t brush.”

But the absence of film has left us with other problems in the camera department:

• Consumerism
• Technological Obsolescence.
• Waste
• Energy Consumption Increases

Film had waste and chemical implications, but what exactly do you do with that Nikon D100 when you have 2 D3′s and no one want’s a crappy old digital body? Recycle it of course. But how can you be sure your electronics are being recycled properly?

Somewhere it’s been mentioned that Nikon and Canon produce new camera models on a 18 month cycle. Because each revision is “twice as better,” every photographer wants one, which feeds the cycle of buying, depreciating, and eventually throwing away of products.

I should also include that the major camera manufacturers Nikon, Canon, and Olympus are based in Japan. That means that a tremendous amount of energy is expended to get that D700, 5D mkii or E3 into your hands. One of the tenets of living sustainably is locality of goods, and supporting local economies. Until an American company (ahem Kodak), jumps into the professional level camera market and begins manufacturing in the U.S., we all fail.

With most enhancements in camera technology comes the need for more computing power. Not only are we, as photographers, addicted to our cameras, but we are now slaves to our glowing LCD screens.  I found it difficult to find any figures for world wide computer energy consumption, but, yearly, an average computer consumes about “1,000 kWh/y, or almost as much a the total electricity consumption of a high-efficiency household.” – Greenpeace.
And we are always on our computers, Photoshopping, blogging, running our business, marketing, checking Twitter and Facebook, etc. You know those late nights editing, sorting, watermarking and blogging those pictures… Yeah, that’s a LOT of energy consumption.

Products – Yes a DVD is a product

So for the photographers that still insist they are “Green,” let’s breakdown the product side of things to expose to them their persistent ignorance.

• DVD’s – Manufactured in China where environmental laws are skirted, shipped to the U.S. on huge tanker boats that each create more pollution than 50,000,000 cars. (Make sure you read the staggering statistics at the bottom), and stacked on Mega-Wal-Fry’s shelves to be sold and provide the out of state corporations with well over 80% of the profit and the local economy with the scraps.
• DVD Cases – See Above.

*A side note about DVD’s: They are currently a format that will be rendered obsolete in a matter of years. And as such, there will be millions of DVD’s eventually transferred to some new medium and thrown away, adding to our growing landfill problems.

• Prints and Canvas – Fortunately these tend to be held onto much longer than DVD’s, but with with true photographic prints, there are still chemical wastes that need to be disposed of properly, and the infrastructure to handle that.
• Albums – I got to admit… I love a pretty album made with dead cow’s skin. I know there are alternatives, and non-leather albums out there (I’ve heard great things about Wild Magnolia books). But when people see my lovely Leather Craftsmen albums, they just got to have them, and I’m such an enabler.
  Now, while they are somewhat local (to me), and they tend not to use overly harmful components in manufacturing, they still need a supply of leather (leather = dead cows) to keep up with demands. So even the albums will have a long useful lifespan and end up being passed down to future generations, they aren’t immune from having an affect on the environment.
  *Vinyl albums are a 100 times worse, but ewww.

Conclusion:

Wedding photographers that say they are “Green” are liars.

Uhhh… So what can we do then?

Well… That’s tough, I don’t have much for answers, but here’s a few tips:

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (you’ve heard it a million times, but our industry has very few options right now).
2. Purchase local (go to your local camera store, yeah, it’s a little more, but you stimulate your city’s economy and not a big corporation, besides B&H has all those New Yorkers to buy from them in New York). Who knows, maybe your local store will sponsor you if you are good enough and purchase your equipment there exclusively.
3. Hang onto that old camera or computer just a little bit longer. Come on there is a little more life in it. Perform a little “ISO CPR” if you have to.
4. Look to ways you can provide low impact deliverables. Provide creative post-consumer DVD packaging instead of petroleum based plastic cases.
5. Start a camera manufacturing company here in the good old US of A. 

And most important of all:  Don’t let the “Green Hype” sweep you up in a fever that takes advantage of unknowing consumers. Be honest with your clients. The industry has great strides ahead of itself, and it’s a breach of ethics and trust to claim to your clients that you are something you are not.

Those are all the ideas I have… What are yours?

William Bay is a I’m not a Green Wedding Photographer – And neither are you..

And just a week ago, those intangible forces showed their glowing heads for a visit once again.

Nexus Occurance #1:
I had come to tell my friend Carissa at Flora & Fauna that I would accept her offer of the office space in the back (I know it’s huge news, and it deserves it’s own post), and when I showed up Adrianne Clay from An Affair To Remember Catering. Adrianne is a well respected person in the wedding industry here in Austin, and I have been told many times that I should make contact with her. As it turns out, Carissa is very good friends with her. I gave her one of my marketing booklets and was persuaded by her charm to give her 4 more (I’m running out now – haha). We hit it off, and she liked my work. Yay!!!

Nexus Occurance #2:
As Carissa, Adrianne and I sat out on the patio on a very unusually warm winter day, two guys with video equipment  entertained Carissa’s son next door at House Park BBQ, which is not unusual, he makes friends with everyone. As interest wore off the two guys came over and started talking to us, told us that they were visiting 50 states and filming a documentary on the recession. And thus we were introduced to Austin and Brian Chu from The Recess Ends, and we found ourselves in the middle of a impromptu interview on the recession, how Austin’s local business-centric model has padded the economy here, and how-if-at-all the recession will hit when it does here.

Here are a couple strong points that came out of that interview:

• Austin’s local economy has not been hit as bad as around the nation because of movements like Keep Austin Weird, which encourages shopping at locally run businesses instead of chain superstores.
• Because of that movement, more money stays within the community.
• Nothing exists in a vacuum however and Austin will at some point become susceptible to the recession
• The slow down that we have experienced, is more than likely due to people buying into the national media coverage on the state of the economy.

The Chu brothers have a long road ahead of them until they finish their trip sometime around May, and then there will be an extensive, many months long, editing process to make a movie. I wish them all the best, and hopefully Carissa, Adrianne and I will be in a feature documentary sometime next year!

Only on 12th & Lamar…

Safe travels guys!

William Bay is a I Was Interviewed for a Documentary, and the Importance of Local Economy.