The Green in Entertainment: A conversation

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2010 19: 209 originally published online 25 May 2010Journal of Management InquiryNancy B. Kurland and Deone Zell

The Green in Entertainment: A conversation

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Meet the Person

Journal of Management Inquiry19(3) 209 –218© The Author(s) 2010Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1056492610363349http://jmi.sagepub.com

The Green in Entertainment: A conversation

Nancy B. Kurland1 and Deone Zell1

Abstract

The shift to a sustainable economy represents one of the most sweeping transitions organizations face today. In this article, we ‘chat’ with five sustainability leaders in the entertainment industry to learn what interests them about sustainability, how their motivations translate into company actions, and how they overcome obstacles.

Keywords

sustainability, entertainment industry, green

The shift to a sustainable economy represents one of the most sweeping transitions organizations face today. Since former Vice President Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Acad-emy Award, and joint Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sustainability talk has reached explosive proportions. Green now graces the covers of popular news magazines (Time, Fortune, Busi-ness Week, The Economist), appears on university campuses, in Fortune 100 companies (Wal-Mart, GE), commands a “green week” on television (NBC), a 24/7 “Planet Green” channel (Discovery), and themes of academic (Academy of Management ‘09, “Green Management Matters”) and trade conferences. Here we focus on the entertainment industry because of its high visibility, decentralized structure, and ref-erent power. The entertainment industry controls television, film, and other media, as well as access to celebrities and other trend makers, influences supply chains, and therefore, is an important force in socio-cultural change.

In this JMI Meet the Person, we present an artificially constructed fireside chat with five sustainability leaders in the entertainment industry. We interviewed each person face-to-face or by phone, and personally transcribed each interview. We were curious to hear: What interests them per-sonally about sustainability? How do their motivations translate into company actions? What obstacles do they face, and how do they overcome these? The interviews ran between 30 minutes and 2 hours. We followed a set of spe-cific questions and probed for additional information when appropriate. Each leader approved his or her portion of the article before we submitted it for publication.

The leaders in alphabetical order are:

Shelley Billik, Vice President of Environment Initia-tives, Warner Bros.

Warner Bros, a subsidiary of Time Warner, is a global leader in creating, producing, distribut-ing, licensing, and marketing all forms of cre-ative content and their related businesses across all current and emerging media and platforms (www.warnerbros.com and www.wbenviron-mental.com)

Christiane Maertens, Manager, Disney Environmental Affairs.The Walt Disney Company, founded by Walt Dis-

ney in 1923, is a US$35 billion dollar company and a DOW 30 stock. It includes four major business segments: Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Consumer Products, and Media Networks. (http://corporate.disney.go.com/envi-ronmentality/index.html)

Josh Mark, Executive Director of Special Event Pro-duction, Creative Services, Fox Broadcasting Com-pany.Fox News Corporation, a US$62 billion company,

is a “global vertically integrated media com-pany” (Fox’s Web site). (http://www.newscorp.com/energy/)

Michelle Plotkin, Event Producer and Environmental Consultant (formerly Director of Event Production and Music Producer, ESPN).Owned by Disney, ESPN provides comprehensive

television sports coverage. It produces several

1Franklin & Marshall College

Corresponding Author:Nancy B. Kurland, Department of Business, Organizations, and Society, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003Email: [email protected]



210 Journal of Management Inquiry 19(3)

marquee televised events, including The X Games, an annual multisport event focused on action sports, and The ESPYs, awards given annually for excellence in sports performance. (http://disney.go.com/environmentality/xgames/summerxgames13/index.html)

Jennifer Regan, Manager of Sustainability Programs, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG).AEG, a private company, is a leading sports and

entertainment organization with facilities such as STAPLES Center, sports franchises such as the Los Angeles Galaxy, and music concerts and festivals such as Coachella and production. (http://www.aegworldwide.com/home.html)

Question: To begin with, please tell us your role at your company.

Billik: My role is to craft policy and implement programs that steer our company on the road to sus-tainability—and this is not a destination, but rather the evolution of a central idea or mode in a continu-ally changing business landscape. As our product is entertainment, it’s so much more amorphous [com-pared to manufacturing a product]. In our case we don’t just look at the content (though we do ancil-lary educational projects when content does have an environmental theme), but rather focus on envi-ronmental goals that produce measurable changes in our business. So what I have focused on is our facilities, and the brick and mortar, which is where that product is being created. I look at the inputs in terms of procurement and energy. Energy consump-tion is a huge part of what I do. And I look at the output in terms of waste. A big part of my job is to elevate awareness within our company and create a culture that embraces sustainability throughout our business.

Regan: Sustainability is built into my title. And I am the only titled employee (at AEG) who is managing sustainability. Although this is the case, I work with a number of other employees who assist me to implement sustainability policy throughout the organization. On a daily basis, what I do is create information for different business units. I will meet with an executive, or a project manager, someone in charge of a project, and I will guide them through a discussion on the environmental effects of their operations. I bring the principles of sustainability; they bring me what they do.

Mark: I handle the production for special events here at Fox. And I work for the actual TV network, the

broadcast network side of the company. Over the past years, I have been part of the team and really responsible for a lot of the greening of the events that we do, as well as part of the team helping to green Fox as a whole.

Plotkin: At ESPN I developed a project called X Games Environmentality. This is an initiative that is both the behind-the-scenes as part of the production process, and in front of the audience as part of a com-munity outreach effort to drive best environmental practices throughout the X Games events and pro-vide environmental education to X Games fans.

Maertens: [I’m in charge of] strategic development on how we as a company utilize our various platforms (Disney Channel, movies, online, etc.) to engage people (kids especially) on a global level for envi-ronmental awareness. We are also developing a community for kids that focuses on the environ-ment and will provide kids the tools and resources to take individual and collective action, inspiring change among the family and local community. Disney not only reaches millions of people around the world, we have a lot of great stars that can help raise awareness, influence, and educate kids on the environment. Another project I’m focused on is [our] in-class program called Disney’s Environ-mentality Challenge (DEC) which is available to fifth graders in California, Florida, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands—which we plan to launch nationally in the Fall of ‘09. The very high level overview of DEC—it’s project-based learning teaching environmental education through curricu-lum integration activating kids to effect change in their schools and community. The teachers are there to facilitate and ensure content standards are met, but it really is a student-driven program.

Question: Please tell us about the time you first became interested in sustainability issues. When did you catch the bug?

Plotkin: According to my parents, I was always a little green. As a kid, I was always drawing on the back-side of a used piece of paper, and never wanting to brush my teeth for longer than I needed to actually run the water in the sink, and all those little things. My mom was an event planner in Los Angeles when I was growing up, and I always saw her going out of her way to donate food that was unused from events to homeless shelters and always looking for locally grown and produced products and espe-cially flowers and decor items that she was putting



Kurland and Zell 211

together for events. And it wasn’t necessarily from an environmental standpoint specifically, but a common sense way of going about producing big events efficiently and without a ridiculous amount of excess.

Billik: I grew up in Mexico and Israel, living on a kib-butz. I think the perspective from my family—my developmental years—was also one of living very close to the land. [The kibbutz was] Sde-Boker, which is in the Negev desert. It’s where [former Prime Minister of Israel] David Ben-Gurion lived. He used to come to our school, talk to us about the fields and the animals. Sometimes he would walk me to his home. We would walk together and talk. My dad at the time was much involved in different irrigation plans for the desert. And so, it was part of my life. I never really looked at it as anything dif-ferent or environmental. It’s just how we grew up. We used to spend part of the time in school, part of the time working in fields, eating in the communal dining room, eating some of the stuff that we grew. There was always that sense of interdependence with each other and always very much paying atten-tion to the climactic environment, like what is the weather doing, and how are we going to bring water? I mean, to have agriculture in the desert was really quite pioneering. So sustainability has always been a core value in my life.

Mark: It’s something I have always done. My wife and I were the second people in the City of LA to par-ticipate in the solar rebate program. This was nine, ten years ago, a long time ago, at our house. I have had multiple electric vehicles, natural gas powered vehicles. It’s something we have got to do. When I grew up in LA, there were all these days you weren’t allowed to go outside during recess; you had to stay inside, or red flags. Or you would wake up and your chest would hurt. It’s so much dramati-cally better now than it was 25 years ago.

Maertens: Ever since I was a kid actually, because I grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes [California] and my next door neighbors were composting and doing very “strange” things, according to the rest of our neighborhood. And I just became very, very involved in it. And I grew up riding horses, was very into nature, and so I introduced the first Earth Day event at my elementary school and everybody thought I was a freak but it was really fun. And then my dad said, “You should get a job in the environment.” And I said, “No, Pop, there are no jobs in the environment” because back then there were certainly no jobs like this in the environ-ment and so I went off into political science. And

[the environment] was something that was always important to me.

Regan: [In high school] I started studying indigenous rights and indigenous cultures, specifically self-determination efforts in terms of the UN and political battles over land in South America. That’s really where I started to understand how sustainable development was a policy tool being used in rights-based legal battles for who could use the land and for what purpose, what resource use. So it came from an equal rights perspective as well as an envi-ronmental resource perspective, and I took that with me as I advanced my studies of international devel-opment at college. I was always inspired by the expansive amount of sustainability laws and poli-cies that had been developed in the international space, especially in the UN. But there is very little policy in terms of domestic policies. I was also an avid outdoor enthusiast. At my university, I lived and became the resident assistant of the environ-mental and outdoor-themed dorm and I managed the outdoor program. So in my personal life there was a constant thread of recycling, of leave-no-trace camping, of being out in nature. There became a natural connection to my academic life where I was focusing on rights abuses in terms of interna-tional laws and how to represent people in the international resource use spectrum.

What is the history of your company’s movement to “go green”? What factors led to the effort? What is your organization doing with respect to sustainability?

Billik: I was hired [In 1992] to develop a recycling program. That was the result of a group of environ-mentally minded employees who went to the management of the studio and said, “We really ought to have a recycling program.” And the man-agement said, “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. We certainly have a lot of office buildings.” And I realized that recycling is something that people see. It’s much less elusive than energy or climatic change or source reduction. They understand not wanting to generate waste and instead recycling it so it can be made into a new product. So it was very immediate and tangible: everybody got a desk-side recycling container and we used the word “resources” instead of trash. So we just started building on that, and started saying, “OK, now we’re going to not only recycle in the offices but we’re going to look at all the stage materials, the lumber, the glass, the metal, the carpet, whatever




we generate there.” That was a lot more challenging because the recycling markets were not very good then. This is what led me to procurement. We started looking at what we buy, but we also started using the procurement process for vendors. For example, when we went out to bid for our trash hauling con-tract, we looked for a hauler who could help us with diversion of lumber, particularly because that is a big part of our waste stream. We started using our purchasing power to help our own recycling pro-gram, and vendors were responsive. We’re a high profile company, and sometimes even if the con-tract itself wasn’t very big, dollar-wise, they wanted to be able to say that the studio is a client. We were one of the first studios to have a construction and demolition policy and program to divert mixed con-struction materials—to have them sorted out and not just go to a landfill. We were one of the first studios to set a standard that copy paper has to have a minimum of 30% post-consumer content, and letterhead and business cards have 100% post-consumer content.

Regan: The CEO came to our Chief Administrative Officer and said, “I want to know what it takes to make AEG green and I want it on my desk by the end of August.” And this was in June. So we had 2 months. A year prior to that the Sr. VP of Booking for our Live division, who is one of the most influ-ential people connected to artists and talent, stood up [at a big meeting where all company executives and several employees were assembled] and said, “We need to go green. We need to understand that this is what our clients want, this is what the audi-ence needs, and it’s the right thing to do.” So several executives were ready and willing to participate in our first Sustainability Committee. We had a com-mittee of 20 company leaders that represented each major function of the company. They met more than 2 months as a group and individually with me. Our first task was to acknowledge that our company is inherently energy-using and waste-producing. We seek to give our fans the best sensory live experi-ence that anyone can offer, which requires lots of lights, sound, and all the delicious food and drink you consume while in our venues. All of this com-bines with a really short time in between events giving us a constant stream of energy use and waste produced. I mean, there is no way of getting around it, we are environmentally impactful. Fans are not demanding it yet and only some artists are, but we recognize our responsibility to provide the fans the same great experience with a reduced environmen-tal effect. These challenges inform our three major

priorities. Our first major priority was, is, and is going to be for a long time: education. Because what we need to do is empower our employees, [to help them] identify small changes they can make in their department. Our next two priorities are energy and waste. We also look at water, transportation, chemical and material selection in terms of our purchasing.

Mark: Rupert Murdoch made a statement, [about] 2 years ago, saying that Fox, or News Corp. which owns Fox, will be carbon neutral by 2010. Since then we have done a lot. Our first major event that we did that we went green on was last year’s Emmy Awards where we actually measured the carbon footprint of the entire show, the red carpet area, the press tent, the post-party, the Governor’s ball. We put solar panels on the red carpets. We built a 30 foot by 90 foot canopy that had the solar panels on it. The red carpet itself was recycled. And actually for the first time at the Emmy’s, we actually rented the red carpet instead of, normally it is purchased. And then that [solar] system is actually going to be donated to a school. And Fox did a whole Green It, Mean It campaign in April where we had a whole bunch of stuff on air and on the website. Different tips from talent, tips, video clips types of things.

Plotkin: In my experience at ESPN, sustainability seemed to be an inherent part of the production pro-cess from the beginning of any new project and something that grew with the evolution of each project. I jumped into the X Games when it was in its third year, and it was already an event that was very sensitive to its environment. The first two X Games were in Rhode Island; it started in a very old, historic fort. So they had to be really sensitive to the venue because the Parks Department was very adamant that nothing be harmed. So the event started in this mind-set of, ‘Okay, we’re going to do this big event and all these people are gonna come and we are going to have to build these ramps and all these temporary structures and we’re going to generate some waste, and we’re going to have to do something about it. And we’re doing it in this very sensitive environment.’

That set the tone for the X Games to always be very environmentally minded. As the X Games grew in size and stature there was a natural push to manage resources better. With larger venues and more spec-tators come more resources consumed and more event waste created. The X Games responded by implementing really exhaustive recycling programs. Beyond just cans and bottles, everything that can be recycled gets recycled: cardboard, office paper, and




construction materials get sent to specialized recy-cling facilities. Even the cooking grease from staff catering gets recycled into biodiesel and all the food waste gets composted. All the utensils, cups, and plates are all made from bio-plastics and sugarcane by-product so they are also compostable. Also, materials that are usable but that aren’t needed are donated to Habitat for Humanity or LA Shares or whatever organizations need the items. The X Games staff is also always looking for ways to mini-mize consumption. Take for example the use of individual plastic bottles. At the 2008 X Games, refillable water bottles were issued to staff and water filling stations were placed all over the venues and the result was the reduction of individual single-use water bottles by the equivalent of 50,000 units. The X Games also reuses all the wood ramps that are built for skateboarding and BMX competitions. They are either reused for another event, or they are donated to a community that needs a skate park, or they are disassembled and repurposed for another skate ramp to be built sometime in the future or, the wood is no longer usable, then it is recycled properly at a construction and demolition materials recovery facility. So, it was always seen as a matter of good business sense to implement sustainable practices. In many cases sustainable business practices result in use of less resources or reuse of resources, which more often not saves time and money.

Maertens: The environment and sustainability and conservation go all the way back to Walt Disney from park design to employee engagement. Movies like the Wonderful World of Disney [were] all about the environment and nature and conservation, animal, and habitat protection. So that’s always been an underlying component to the company, but really when we became something that was like a department was in 1989, 1990; we formed the Environmental Policy department. And it was more for compliance and employee engagement, and “Environmentality” was something that was really close to the company internally but it was never something we really talked about externally, never felt like it was something we needed to do. It was more because it was something that we wanted to do. So fast forward to 2005, 2006. We really ramped up our environmental programs not only internally but looking externally as a company. We’ve completely reorganized the way the com-pany is measuring impact and we have formed an environmental council comprised of executives from all of our different business units. And when I say business units, that’s groups like ESPN, and

ABC, and theme parks and resorts to basically help develop the strategy for the company in terms of measurement offsetting and looking at waste minimi-zation and energy conservation, animal conservation, habitat conservation, and how we can, as a com-pany, really make a difference internally before we even wanted to begin talking about it to the public. Because we’re firm believers that you have to walk the [talk].

Question: What are some major obstacles you face?Billik: One challenge is the sheer size and diversity of

the company, in terms of businesses and divisions. So I do a lot of stakeholder mapping and engage-ment in navigating sustainability goals. Also, since it is “Hollywood,” sometimes big personalities will trump a corporate decision, but the reality is that all of us have to change our behaviors. Secondly, there is a perception that sustainability projects or envi-ronmentally preferred products cost more, so I have to include costs and benefits that are often external-ized in a standard ROI calculation, as well as expand our thinking beyond short-term returns. For example, our LEED building retrofit cost about 3% more over the standard project budget but provided a payback within 2 years based on utilities only, and when including employee comfort (which leads to productivity), the payback was immediate.

Maertens: It really comes down to communication, feasibility, and you know, what is easiest for our cast members and will not impact them too much. At the same time, it needs to be communicated that the changes (e.g., no more ordering water bottles and moving to reusable bottles) are important and required and may require a little extra effort but at the end of the day it’s a matter of shifting the way people think and providing them the right tools and resources to make the shift seem pretty seamless. So, our biggest roadblock is communication.

Regan: Our biggest obstacle is communication and leverage to make decisions. Most people do not know the name Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), but they know the name of the sports teams we own, like the Los Angeles Kings or Los Angeles Galaxy; or the name of the venues we own, Staples Center and the O2 in London; or the concerts and festivals we produce, Coachella or Jon Bon Jovi. AEG is a company based on partnerships; partner-ships with sponsors, with cities, food vendors, and various service providers. Because each of these venues, sports teams, concerts, festivals, or live family shows is its own complicated web of




partnerships and relationships, we don’t have the same relationship everywhere. So we don’t have the same leverage point everywhere. We own the Staples Center so we can partner with the food vendor and ask them to provide organic and local food. But we do not own the Target Center which is owned by the city of Minneapolis [Minnesota] so our ability to be successful is dependent on our rela-tionship with the different decision makers and their personal interest in the environment. (Luckily the city of Minneapolis is very progressive on the environment and they are eager to reduce the envi-ronmental footprint of the Target Center.) So we face questions of how to get our partners, vendors, and service providers on board. It’s a lot about edu-cation. So, for example, we had a group come to us last week, and ask, “Why aren’t you doing sustain-able seafood across all of your venues?” Well, because we have more than 36 different food ven-dors across our company. Each of them has different contracts, obligations, and priorities. There is still a lot of hesitance with the individual decision makers at the top of these different partners. There is con-cern over what this change really means for their staff and what the true value is. Except for those of our partners that have existing environmental initia-tives we have a lot of work to do in educating them on the value of sustainability.

Mark: [On the] event side we have to look at it, is it worth spending 40,000 extra dollars to use LED lighting? Sometimes it doesn’t [make sense]. A lot of times it doesn’t. And finance isn’t gonna give us the money for that. Can we make a small difference, maybe using 10% LED lighting and only spend US$500 extra? That we could probably get approved and that is a step in making a change. We look at different types of things. When we go to a caterer and say, “We want our food to be locally grown and organic.” They are gonna say, “Well that costs that much more.” Well, we can look at differ-ent ways of doing it. Instead of having four entree choices, we cut it down to three entree choices. Or instead of six hors d’oeuvre choices, it’s four hors d’oeuvre choices. We look at different ways of fig-uring out, “Okay, how can we do it for the same money?” I mean, money’s tight. If we can show we save money, they are gonna go for that in a second.

Plotkin: The X Games is really in a league of its own with its approach to sustainability. Jack Wienert, who is the executive director of the X Games, has always put this mentality forth that “any time you do an event, you should leave the venue better than you found it.” And that’s really challenging

sometimes. When the X Games moved to Los Angeles, to the Home Depot Center in Carson, Cal-ifornia, it was a brand-new beautiful venue. So the challenge was: How do you leave a brand-new venue better than you found it? Every part of the production team interprets the challenge differently. The marketing department says, “Well, we can make the event and the new venue more popular than it was before.” And the venue designers say, “Well, we can make the venue layout more efficient and we can learn how to use the space better than the venue has been used before.” Everyone sort of approaches the concept of leaving the venue better than you found it, differently. But at the end of the day, it really comes back to have you done every-thing you can to leave the place better than it was before? The X Games Environmentality program takes sustainability to the next level with its educa-tional programs, extensive recycling efforts, and use of sustainable materials, like bio-plastics made from renewable resources (instead of using petroleum-based plastics) for utensils for crew meals so that everything can be composted from the catering operation. When an event is on the cutting edge of sustainable event practices, the challenge becomes—what else can be done to leave this place better than it was found?

Question: How do you overcome these obstacles?Billik: I’m not sure that I’m 100% successful yet. . . .

People respond to different “touch points.” Some people respond to the next generation perspec-tive—like “I have children, I want to leave a legacy. I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, ‘We knew about climate change and I did every-thing in my power to do something about it.’” Other people respond to saving money. You know, if we can reduce our electrical load, then we are going to save money. And that is what they respond to as a financial person or someone who is respon-sible to shareholders. They say, “It is my fiscal responsibility to reduce our electrical consump-tion.” In the end, we’re getting to the same result, whether we are addressing climate change by reducing our emissions footprint, or whether we look at it as saving money on utility bills. So I try to have that parallel conversation. My motto here has always been to demonstrate the business case for sustainability—why it is that the business sector not only has a responsibility to be engaged, but has an economic opportunity to be engaged. And I find that, ultimately, when you have the




procurement department, the various buyers really owning, writing the environmental specifications and communicating with the vendors, and then fol-lowing up on the RFPs, they are starting to understand it. Then it’s not just me imposing it on them. They start to own it. So, when I’m gone tomorrow, the programs will stay. The more you institutionalize [them], the less we need an “envi-ronmental initiative” [per se]. So I’m about the result. I’m about making an effect. And shifting culture.

Regan: Ultimately change is a big thing for people. Imagine you are [a] business leader I [meet] with, your first response is, “That sounds great. Who wants me to do this? Are they going to help pay for it? Are they going to provide assistance?” Usually people already have their budgets set in stone by the time [I’m] talking to them, and they already have roles defined for their staff. [I’m] asking to add products, change processes, potentially add policy, which requires a review of their existing work, and I’m asking to potentially add elements that may have a really great ROI but it requires an initial investment. So, you can just imagine, your eyes are wide and that’s a lot that you weren’t expecting to deal with when your budget’s already locked in for the year. [So,] how do you overcome these obstacles? You build really good personal relationships (laughs). I laugh because it sounds really ridiculous.

Maertens: [In the] Corporate Environmental Affairs we really act as consultants and develop the tem-plates and the platforms, these foundations, for these bigger environmental standards and pro-grams. And then this [environmental] council actually structured green teams within their busi-ness units and a lot of individuals who either showed interest or it was the appropriate fit, this was absorbed into their regular job. And employee engagement is [something we’re working on]. We have employees that [say], “no problem, got it, done, easy said, easy done. I’ve already been doing this.” And then you have the employees that are saying, “Oh, my God, if you add one more thing to my plate, I am going to scream.” But then simple behavior changes, the low-hanging fruit, like turn-ing off the lights—and we got rid of water bottles. We launched what’s called “The Green Standard” on Earth Day 2008, which is a set of five standards that are going to be launched throughout the year. And the first one was green workspace, and among the standard was eliminating plastic waters from our supplies catalogue. We have the five gallon

bubblers. And we did a reusable mug program where people got reusable mugs. And can I tell you, the reusable water bottle program was oh, a strug-gle. Because people did not want to let go of their water bottles. And then you know by May we had cut down by 50% of our water bottles that were ordered. So it really comes down to changing habits, changing behaviors, but again not taking something away from people but giving them options rather than giving them zero options, “instead of doing this, you can have this.”

Mark: A lot of people at Fox, I would say, you got 90% of people at Fox [who] are probably interested or care in some way or another. Then I think it’s [a] narrowing down of understanding and doing differ-ent things. Like at Fox, they did a thing last December, where they set up a display near the commissary of an equivalent amount of water bot-tles we use on the Fox lot in a week. It was gynormous. Just this giant thing of how many water bottles we use in a week. And after that the water bottle usage got cut dramatically on the lot. I mean, it was in the 80% range, where the departments said, “We’re going to stop using water bottles; we’re gonna switch over to water coolers.” And they have a hybrid incentive for employees. When you get a Prius, they will give you US$4,000. They have incentives for carpooling, taking public trans-portation, walking to the lot. So they pay you every day that you do that. I take the bus a bunch of times, so I get US$2.75 a day every time I take the bus. And they have discounts in the studio store for a bus pass. Much of everything we are doing is about education—for our viewers, the employees. If people understand why we are doing things, why is biodiesel better. When we go to a vendor and say, “We want to use biodiesel.” And they are like, “Huh? Is that the stuff that you get from a McDon-ald’s fryer? You want to put that in my truck or my generator?” And when they understand that you are talking about EPA-certified, federal standards, refined fuel, covered by your manufacturer’s war-ranty, then they’re like, “Oh, okay. This makes sense. I should be using this.”

Plotkin: Well, first off, they are good challenges to have. They are the kind that motivate increased effort for the greater good. But to make sure the challenge progresses in a positive manner, I have always believed in educating people so they can learn to participate in their own individual way. I think signage works well, to explain the environ-mental initiatives in place at an event. And where possible, assigning staff to positions where they can




help to educate other event staff is really effective. At The ESPYs this year, dedicated “Environmen-tality Ambassadors” worked one-on-one with the production staff to properly recycle and compost all materials and the event diverted 86.5% of their waste from the landfill. At the X Games, factoids are created with information about recycling, com-posting, and reducing emissions by carpooling. And all those environmental concepts can be communi-cated via the venue JumboTrons so it’s not necessary to produce hard signage that creates waste or uses a lot of energy to produce. Another great initiative that works well at big events and one of my favor-ites is The TRASHed Recycling Store. It’s run by Eric Ritz and his nonprofit Global Inheritance, which is very focused on raising environmental awareness among kids and teens. The TRASHed Recycling Store is basically a place where a specta-tor can bring an empty aluminum can or plastic bottle and exchange it for tokens which can then be collected for prizes. So it’s like a store where you can get merchandise but the only currency that is accepted is recyclables. At the X Games they have extended this to a program called “Get Caught Recycling” whereby when a spectator is “caught” recycling somewhere away from The Store by the TRASHed Recycling Store staff they also get a token. The spectator may not even know there is a Recycling Store on-site. So when they get “caught” they are told about the store and then they can take that token to the store and buy something. The X Games also encourages ride sharing and carpooling in the same way. When a spectator comes to the event via public transportation they can trade their bus ticket for a prize at The TRASHed Recycling Store or the LA Metro booth. Similarly, they may “get caught” carpooling by Recycling Store staff in the parking lot. It’s a fun way to reward people for being environmentally sensitive.

Question: Can you offer some final thoughts?Mark: Sometimes there are people who either don’t

get it, and again it goes back to education. Why are we doing this? And what is the specific reason for something? And when they understand it, they are like, “Oh, okay, that makes sense.” We are a TV company; we are not like an airline or a manu-facturing company. News Corp’s footprint is around 640,000 tons. Worldwide. We are on six continents around the world. But what we are is a media company. And the footprint of all the people that watch our shows around the world everyday is

gynormous. And the best thing we can do is to edu-cate people. People come up and they see a solar panel on the red carpet. Some people have never seen a real solar panel in front of them. They don’t understand what they are, what they look like, or how they work, or what they do. So having that stuff there for them and then putting it into a school where people can learn and the kids can learn and they go home and say, “Mommy, why don’t we have solar panels? So they prevent this much carbon every year and they would save us money.” And all that kind of stuff.

Plotkin: For me, as an event producer who prefers to live in a clean and healthy environment, I’m hoping to see some big changes on the horizon. I think it would be great when the big sports and entertain-ment venues would start to have comprehensive in-house recycling programs like the X Games has developed. Because then the venues would be doing it 365 days a year and not just when an environmen-tally conscious event comes to town. I’m always wondering, why isn’t everybody doing everything they can to recycle everything possible and reduce their energy consumption and lower emissions? My big questions lately are: What are the pieces that are missing? Is it public perception about the impor-tance of these initiatives? Is it lack of infrastructure for recycling multiple waste streams? Or just lack of effort on the part of individuals and corpora-tions? Is it that people just don’t see the damage that’s being done? What’s missing? A lot of times I think it’s imagination. Or it’s misinformation. Maybe people just aren’t imagining what they can do with their recyclable discards? Or maybe they aren’t informed about why they should recycle, or how they can recycle, or what can be recycled? Or how much better the air quality would be if we all drove less? Do other people not notice that there are trees and more cars than there were a decade ago? Wouldn’t more shade and less traffic be a good thing? Shouldn’t these be things we all work toward? Somehow “being green” is a very convo-luted concept, everybody’s doing different things for different reasons. I think it’s interesting to see how much the PR aspect plays into it, and how much of what some companies are doing really falls into more of an effort to jump on the green band-wagon, the whole “me too, green too!” sort of thing, rather than a real environmental effort. It’s impor-tant to evaluate each initiative and determine its effectiveness. Is the environmental initiative really closing the loop? Are you recycling food waste by composting so that you can create nutrient rich soil




to grow more food? Are you planting trees to create more oxygen to counteract all the CO2 you create by driving your car around? I think everybody is sort of jockeying into these different positions to be green but they’re not always understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing and whether they’re doing it for the right reasons and making an actual difference. I’m always looking for ways to close the loop, to lessen the effect of the events I’m involved with, and to build awareness. I like to leave places better than I found them. I think it’s a good grounding philosophy to live by.

Regan: If you look at the core principles of sustainabil-ity (Dernbach, 2002), everyone can agree that it requires integrated decision-making. It requires making sure all stakeholders are properly identified and engaged in the decision-making process. It requires long-term planning in addition to short-term planning. It requires consideration of full life cycle assessments with respect to the true cost of environmental effects. You know it is really difficult for a lot of companies outside of major industries to decide what they want to do and they are looking toward frameworks like the ISO 14001. A lot of companies who are in manufacturing look at that because it’s an international standard, they are com-fortable with those, they have heard about them. But for companies like mine, what is the value of ISO 14001? We’re a live entertainment company. We don’t manufacture anything. And it’s an interesting debate. A lot of people are turning to LEED as a gen-eral framework, but LEED is very specific to development and doesn’t offer a guide for general business practices. Ultimately, all of these standards, certifications, and rating systems are just guidelines, and you need to fill in the details specifically to your own venue or business model. And I think that is where it gets difficult, and many complain that this is where sustainability becomes too abstracted but I would argue otherwise. When you look across all the standards, you can identify principles that are really fundamentally the same. The difference is in how they get applied; the principles need to be flex-ible to the decisions on the table. I think we’re all struggling to find measures of success that cross divisions, or cross functions or cross industry so we can demonstrate credibility in our efforts. But ulti-mately when we have transparency about our methodology and accountability in achieving our goals, you wouldn’t necessarily need them to be a standard as much as verifiable and clear.

Maertens: We have the support of our senior leaders, Bob Iger and Tom Staggs, 100%. And for them it

really comes down to the understanding that yes, it is going to cost us but ultimately it’s something that we want and need to do. Walt was a huge believer in it and it’s something that just kind of stuck, and Bob and Tom are huge supporters and want our com-pany to excel in sustainability and environmental education. We are a big company and we do reach a lot of people and it’s a brand people trust. And we want to maintain that reputation and do things out-side of entertaining. The bigger part of it is because it’s the right thing to do. As a company [that is] so family-oriented, we want to promote this world of environmental change and behavior. We want to set examples.

Billik: For businesses, I would say that the learning starts with understanding who you are as a com-pany. Because no “how-to” is going to be perfect and exact for your business. The key is to under-stand your culture, to know your leadership, know what drives them, know your stakeholders, and then understand where the opportunities are. Every company has their own personality, their own ethos. I don’t think sustainability can be imposed from the outside. It has to be learned organizationally. Find out who the champions are, whether it is your money people or your marketing people or your HR people. Those three are going to be the major allies now as we see companies engaging cross-function-ally including financial, communications and marketing, and recruitment and retention. I would like to continue learning from academic institutions and young students who are getting a more progres-sive education than was available when I went to school and find out how—when a business tried to do what I’m doing, how could they compress that down from 16 years? How to facilitate this so that it’s not so difficult and it doesn’t take so many years and it comes more naturally? Part of it is just going to happen as more and more of the public hears and sees and engages in sustainability. But I think the academic world has a lot to offer because, every year, those graduates are going into the business world, or into leadership roles within government or otherwise, and so we must nurture and support that type of dialogue and learning.

ConclusionWe were struck by several themes that emerged over the course of the interviews. First, our interviewees did not get to where they are by happenstance. They were influenced in childhood by parents, friends, or formal education to be environmentally minded. Their current employers either



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228297379_Stumbling_Toward_Sustainability?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-e3e2be6390f61caab258c65bc9da50a1-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0NzczNzYxNjtBUzoxMjM1ODIxNDc0NjkzMTJAMTQwNjQ3NTY4ODI5Ng==


hired them specifically to manage environmentally related activities or, because of their predisposition, they took on the organizational role of environmental advocate. In doing so, they helped their organizations model what it means to be green as well as educate employees, suppliers, and customers.

Second, the motivation for these companies to embrace sustainability came from inside the company: the founder’s values or environmentally conscious employees. And from outside the company: customers wanting change or the com-munity demanding it. And for each company, the green journey began by figuring out how it could reduce its nega-tive environmental effect through waste reduction, energy and water conservation, procurement decisions, and so on.

Our leaders’ greatest obstacles relate to engendering change. People are creatures of habit and change comes with small steps and lots of education. In only one case was the greatest challenge meeting the organization’s already high sustainability standards.

To initiate needed change, leaders reach inward to employees and outward to customers and suppliers. They help employees “own” sustainability efforts by finding their touch points (making sustainability personal), providing tan-gible incentives, showing the business case, developing specific policies, and building solid, trusting relationships with decision makers. They educate employees, suppliers, and customers using reason, signage, and tangible incen-tives. And always, the leaders show how going green is not only good for the environment, but good for business.

In their final thoughts, our leaders note their desire, and the desire and power of their companies, to set examples, shift culture, change values, and also recognizing that there is much work to be done as we sort through what we mean by sustainability.

Authors’ NotePlease do not quote any element of this manuscript without authors’ permission. Authors are listed in alphabetical order and both authors contributed equally.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

References

Dernbach, J. (2002). Stumbling towards sustainability. Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute.

Bios

Nancy B. Kurland, PhD, is on the faculty of Franklin & Marshall College. Previously, she was at California State University—Northridge, where she helped found the campus’s Institute for Sustainability, and Pepperdine University, and University of South-ern California. She researches and teaches organizational change in sustainability, and has written more than 20 articles and book chapters on this and other topics that have appeared in Academy of Management Review, Organizational Science, Organizational Dynamics, and other national publications.

Deone Zell, PhD, is a professor of management at California State University, Northridge. She conducts research on organizational change, social networks, the diffusion of innovations and the transi-tion to a sustainable economy. She has authored three books and various articles on these topics. She received her PhD from UCLA in 1994.





The Green in Entertainment: A conversation

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