Electric Owl Studios is now officially open, and Shakefire was there for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Electric Owl is Atlanta’s newest film studio and also the greenest film studio in the world following its LEED Gold certification rating. What does that mean exactly? It means the studio was built from the ground up with sustainability in mind. Solar panels are installed on roofs, offsetting 30% of power consumption. That consumption is assisted by studio lighting powered entirely by LEDs. 48 EV power stations are available for charging cars. Water refill stations are a plenty, encouraging people to bring in their own bottles rather than use disposable cups.
Two of the most interesting elements I saw in terms of sustainability were a dehydrator and Styrofoam recycler. Film productions have a lot of people on set and they all need to be fed. Electric Owl Studios has it own space for catering and while it’s studios do their best to calculate how much food is needed on a daily basis, ultimately there is going to be some food that gets thrown away. The dehydrator will be used to help turn food waste into compost across the facility. The Styrofoam recycler is another cool tool that’ll help reduce waste and the studio’s carbon footprint. Productions use a lot of Styrofoam in the making of sets and while extremely light, it can take up quite a bit of space. Disposing of the Styrofoam following production can be costly. What the recycler does is compress the Styrofoam to make it much easier and cheaper for disposal. It’s less trips which in term takes less fuel.
It’s an interesting thing I’ve never thought of before but makes total sense. Electric Owl Studios has these and plenty of other little attention to details that help make it the greenest film studio in the world. Check out our interview with co-founders Michael Hahn and Dan Rosenfelt to learn more about their sustainability efforts.
