Recommendations

Key strategies to improve the environmental impact of the Eurimages Fund

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Based on the environmental impact study, eight key recommendations are made to improve the Eurimages Fund's environmental impact:

Operational recommendations

1. Minimize travel and prefer eco-friendly options

2. Develop a sustainable procurement commitment

3. Host sustainable events (catering, waste, water)

4. Continue to reduce paper consumption

5. Promote green IT practices

Strategic recommendations

6. Foster an eco-friendly workplace culture

7. Measure and manage environmental impact

8. Commit to reducing environmental impact

Minimize business travel and prefer eco-friendly travel options

The Eurimages Green Strategy recognizes the importance of maintaining a direct “non-virtual” contact with film professionals to carry out its missions in physical events. However, travel can be further optimized by:

For Eurimages Fund:

• Continue to prefer hosting of Governance Meetings as online or hybrid meetings. Consider making policy commitment to host in-person meetings only periodically.
  

• Encourage train rather than flights for for short distance travel. Train travel reduces emissions by 60-90% in Europe. Taking the TGV emits 98% less than a flight.

• Set an annual carbon travel budget for each staff member that considers their role. Track data and celebrate/reward staff that reduce their travel emissions.

• Choose hotels with a green certifications or sustainability commitments/programs in place. Such hotels can offer energy and water-saving systems, local sourcing, biodiversity-friendly landscaping and non-toxic cleaning.
  

• Participate in and organize online events and networking opportunities in the audiovisual sector and improve social media outreach.
  

For collaboration with Council of Europe :

• Update CoE travel policy to encourage eco-friendly travel options. To incentivize this choice, specify that train travel is automatically booked in 1st class.
• Update CoE travel policy to explicitly allow staff spend up to a certain threshold above lowest price ticket without an approval process to purchase train travel (typically €500 per trip). (direct flights over multiple legs)
  
• Encourage travel agency to include an emissions estimate when sending proposed itineraries (e.g. "This itinerary will result in 1 tCO2e, equivalent to the emissions sequestered by 16.5 trees growing for 10 years.”)
  
• Update CoE travel policy to discourage missions of less than 3 days by requiring a justification for why videoconferencing solutions are not suitable and optionally, manager approval.
  

Develop a sustainable procurement commitment

The Festivals team has led a shift to more sustainable purchasing. An opportunity now exists to institutionalize this practice across Eurimages programmes, learning from the experience gained to date.

• Draft and approve a sustainable procurement statement that explicitly outlines preferred green criteria for purchasing of goods and services to apply across all major areas of Eurimages' spend. This can be important to institutionalize green purchasing for the long-term, even if staff changes.

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• locally sourced
  
• recycled content
  
• leasing or buying services rather than new products
• certifications, ecolabels or other impact data
• durability and longer-life span
• supplier take-back programs

• Collaborate with Council of Europe colleagues to ensure coherency and scale up sustainable procurement across the Organization. (Note that the Council of Europe has inserted sustainability clauses into IT services and cleaning contracts)
  

Organize sustainable events (catering, water, waste)

Catering for festival receptions and at governance meetings, especially in Strasbourg, offer an opportunity for the Eurimages Fund to commit to sustainable food choices and catering companies.

Choose caterers committed to:

• Choose caterers that offer sustainable food and beverage options (locally sourced, in season, organic, meat-free, or use alternative proteins. Provide informational materials explaining the improved environmental impact to event attendees.

• Minimize waste by eliminating single-use plastics and plastic water bottles. Switch to biodegradable plates and utensils. Encourage attendees to use their own cups or containers.
  

• Choose caterers committed to reducing food waste through portion control, composting and donations to community associations.
  

For additional guidance, see the European Commission's Green Public Procurement criteria on Food Catering services.

Organize sustainable events by:

• Conduct a self-assessment prior to each Governance Meeting using the United Nations Event Sustainability Checklist. Choose one or two actions to improve on with each event.
  

• Pilot a “paper-smart” and “zero-waste” event to raise interest and buy-in for more sustainable Governance Meetings. Set out clear event targets/KPIs, measure progress and share updates on the environmental impact widely following the meeting.
  

• Create a "Tips for Attending a Sustainable Event" handout to give to event attendees. Provide a list of green hotels and local restaurants, suggest good practices during the event (i.e. use a reusable cup for water, limit printouts),
  

• Invite attendees to offset their travel emissions. Make it easy by featuring a certified carbon offset project during the event.
  

Continue to reduce paper consumption

Significant achievements have already been made in reducing paper consumption. However, further steps can be taken to continue this positive trend.

• Raise staff awareness by posting reminders near printers and sending checklists to think twice before printing office documents.
  

• Update printer settings to require users to approve print jobs in person at printer before documents are printed. Set defaults to double-sided & eco-friendly printing.
  

• Keep a separate bin near printer to recycle office paper. Reuse or repurpose discarded paper into notepads in meeting rooms.
  

• Include a criteria to purchase paper with recycled content or sourced from sustainably managed forests in the sustainable procurement statement.
  

• Reduce need for print out of promotional materials through use of digital projections, QR codes and social media distribution.
  

• Encourage attendees at Governance Meetings to view digital copies of documents with printed copies available upon specific request.
  

For additional guidance, see the European Commission's Green Public Procurement criteria on Copying and Graphic Paper and the WWF's Guide on Paper Saving Tips.

Promote green IT practices

As the digitalization process continues at Eurimages, it will become increasingly important to adopt Green IT practices and systems.

• Collaborate with the Council of Europe IT Department to raise awareness of staff and online attendees of Governance Events of Green IT practices. (e.g. use instant messaging, provide links rather than attachments in emails, reduce emails and recipients)

• Prolong the lifespan of IT equipment (phones, laptops, monitors) to reduce electronic waste. Follow the guidance from the Council of Europe to extend lifespan from 3 to 5 or 6 years before replacement of IT equipment.
  

For additional guidance, see the Green IT Reference: 74 good practices for more responsible IT.

Eco-friendly systems become effective only if adopted and implemented by people. Effort can be made to raise awareness and reward green champions.

• Host periodic learning and discussion events to share environmental best practices across the Eurimages team and partners. Support staff volunteering on green initiatives within Eurimages or across the Council of Europe.

• Feature eco-friendly initiatives of Eurimages staff in staff communications to show impact of these practices and encourage further uptake (e.g. eco-friendly stands and goodies, e-signature system, virtual/hybrid meetings).
  

• Raise awareness across the Eurimages team on green practices and initiatives driven by the Council of Europe, including the waste separation program, commitment to the Strasbourg Biodiversity Charter, Green IT initiatives.
  

Foster an eco-friendly workplace culture

Measure and manage environmental impacts

This study offers a baseline assessment of Eurimages' environmental impact. A commitment to measurement is important to foster a cycle of continuous improvement and calculate impact of achievements.

• Calculate an event carbon footprint for a Governance Meeting to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the full scale of environmental impacts.

• Measure, manage and disclose annually the carbon footprint of the Eurimages Fund.
  

• Improve the scope and accuracy of Eurimage's carbon footprint by conducting a waste audit and estimating impact of eco-friendly stands and goodies.
  

• Encourage industry partners to measure and report environmental impacts to obtain a measurement of industry-wide impacts.
  

Make commitments to reduce environmental impacts

Greening programs work best when endorsed at the highest levels. Setting public commitments and targets help to drive behavior change and trigger collaborations.

• Set targets to reduce emissions and other environmental impacts in key areas (e.g. travel, purchases).

• Commit to reducing emissions per production supported as a meaningful indicator of how Eurimages can "do more with less".

• Commit to becoming a climate-neutral organization, by reducing emissions where feasible and offsetting all remaining unavoidable emissions.
  

• Obtain budget approval/financing to cover the purchase of certified carbon credits.
  

Annex 1: Methodology

This environmental impact assessment was conducted using Impacti software. Impacti offers a methodology aligned with globally recognized GHG accounting standards (GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1) and best practices of United Nations agencies:

• Includes all six GHGs outlined in the Kyoto Protocol (CO2, CH4, N20, HFC, PFC, SF6) and other refrigerants with Global Warming Potential (GWP)

• Total emission results are reported as an aggregate expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e), calculated by multiplying the mass of the six types of GHGs by their respective GWPs compared to CO2.

• GWPs for the six types of GHGs are sourced from the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.
  

Annex 2: Data Table

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Council of Europe

Eurimages

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eurimages@coe.int

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