James Cameron: "DVDs are Wasteful"

I had forgotten about this story. James Cameron, director of "Avatar" (who is planning at least three different releases of his movie "Avatar" on DVD) said this in an interview with the Washington Post:

You’ve been very vocal about environmentalism, and certainly the themes in the film touch on environmentalism and eco-consciousness. Is it possible to put out the next DVD releases in an eco-conscious way?

Cameron: DVDs are wasteful. I think there’s less plastic in a DVD than there is in a VHS. It’s a consumer product like any consumer product. I think ultimately we’re going to bypass a physical medium and go directly to a download model and then it’s just bits moving in the system. And then the only impact to the environment is the power it takes to run the computers, run the devices. I think that we’re not there yet, but we’re moving that direction. Twentieth Century Fox has made a commitment to be carbon neutral by the end of 2010. Because of some of these practices that can’t be changed, the only way to do that is to buy carbon offsets. You know, which again, these are interim solutions. But at least it shows that there’s a consciousness that we have to be dealing with carbon pollution and sustainability.


I guess I was thinking in terms of the packaging. Some DVDs have come out with the slimmer packaging and are made out of recyclable materials, that sort of thing. Is that something that Fox could entertain for this next release?

Cameron: Yeah, exactly. I think that’s something that would be absolutely the right way to approach the 3-D release, which will be next year. We’ll have time to do that. And maybe it’s recyclable paper container, that sort of thing. There’s nothing much you can do about the disc proper, although it’s not a use-once-and-throwaway kind of medium. These are things that people hold onto. So it’s not like plastic water bottles or something like that which people need to get out of their lives as soon as possible.

But the release in November is a box set, so it’s just physically, structurally there are some limitations on that.

But you’re right. These are things the studios need to be thinking about. When I do my next film, we’re going to go much farther than we did in terms of running a green set. You know, look at a typical film set. There’s thousands of plastic water bottles that are used in a given week and that all needs to be revisited. Honestly, the truth is, we have to revisit almost every part of our lives and our existence over the next few years. Energy consumption, I think, being the biggest one. Energy and global warming are interlinked issues obviously, and global warming is going to take us out long before plastic pollution. Don’t get me started on that. I just got back from a two-day renewable energy conference in Aspen and it’s grim trying to get the needle of policy to move. You’re there in D.C. You see what goes on there. You see the paralysis of our leaders, even when there’s a Democratic majority. It’s still paralyzed.

If you've ever seen a movie being made, thousands of water bottles are the least of your "green" worries! Making movies requires a lot of energy consumption from start to finish, not to mention transporting all of those "wasteful" and non-biodegrable DVDs around!

I may have mentioned something similar this last April, when I noted that the Avatar DVD was scheduled to be released on "Earth Day":

For all of you that are "irony impaired", think about how many people are going to buy a plastic disc Tuesday, that is hardly biodegradable, and turn on their big screen TV's and DVD players and sit and suck electricity out of the grid for hours to watch a movie about how superior the simple, primitive life is.

I'm glad James is starting to come around to my way of thinking. But he still has a long way to go. He seems to be of the opinion that if his fortune is to be made polluting the planet, that as long as he makes it "not as bad as it could have been" and paying off his conscience with the indulgences of "carbon credits" that he can continue to pollute as long as he pleases.
Green (money) over "green". *Sigh*

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything