Hollywood is considered a progressive place, concerned with environmentalism, global warming, and “green” things like that. Judging by the number of hybrids in the parking lot, that’s generally true.
Except when it comes to paper.
I’m not much of an environmentalist myself, but even I’m shocked at how much paper we waste. We’ll use half a ream of legal paper on call sheets alone, every single day. We copy memos and forms for the entire cast and crew, going through hundreds of pages at a pop.
And then there’s the scripts. A TV script is about 50 pages, maybe 55 once you include the cover, cast list, and location sheet. When we have a new script, we copy it at least 120 times. That’s more than 6000 sheets of paper.
Or nearly 3/4 of a tree. For one TV show. For one week.
Today, I decided to keep track of how many pieces of paper I personally use today. All the copies, all the printing, everything. As of 6:45, fifteen minutes after I started, I copied 25 pages.
It’s going to be a long day.
UPDATE: As of 1:00 (lunch), 427 pages.
UPDATE 2: At the end of the day (8:00pm), we used 2,965 pages. At that rate, we kill a tree every three days. Which, to be honest, doesn’t sound that bad.
Is it wrong for me to think that?
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