The Most Sustainable Film Set In The World? | Shut It Off ASAP - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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Greg: Can we bring 20 people a day to a farm in the middle of nowhere
for 30 shoot days and generate just ten bags of trash?
Mitch: Spoiler. We can. Let's show you how.
Mitch and Greg: This is "Shut if Off Asap!
Can Hollywood Go Green?"
Welcome to the behind the scenes of "Shut it Off Asap!"
BTS.
Maybe we shoot it this way. Boom.
"Shut It Off Asap!" was basically this concept we came up with
where we want to explore what technologies are out there
to sort of combat climate change.
Without having it just be a doomsday-- no offense, Al Gore, but like...
It sort of an opportunity to have some fun,
do some big crazy things that may or may not work,
but ultimately give us the opportunity
to talk and research more about, like, sustainability,
the environment, and the ultimate impending doom of the climate change.
All right, here we go. Scene 11, take one.
Greg: TV sets are hugely wasteful.
A British study found that between power usage,
transport, production offices, and materials,
an episode of a show like ours
would usually produce about 3 to 4 metrics of CO2,
which is about what an individual would produce in three months.
In fact, even the average Canadian at home
produces 15 to 20 kg of trash per week.
So we decided to do better.
If we're gonna talk the talk, we're wanna walk the walk.
I can't even imagine the guilt we would feel,
like, if this was a production the way that some people have told me other ones are.
- Yeah. - It would feel so hypocritical.
I guess we decided to give ourselves, like, the ultimate challenge
by truly living off-grid in a cabin on the farm we are shooting on.
Should we start with a little house tour?
Yeah, "Cribs!" "MTV Cribs!"
Hi, "MTV Cribs." Welcome to my home.
Do you wanna do that one more time? Wanna do that one more time?
This is a gorgeous door.
It is actually so nice and cool in here 'cause it's a straw-bale cabin,
which is something I did not know about until this shoot, and it's amazing.
Yeah, right now, it's, like, 35 degrees outside.
And it is literally 18 degrees in here. So that's awesome.
It's definitely humid though. There's, like, a dewy vibe.
Sometimes we put our head on the pillows,
and we're like, "Oh, that's a wet pillow."
Mitch: Straw is an excellent insulator.
In fact, back in the day, people used to it to insulate
their big blocks of ice that they'd use for cooling.
And here it keeps the hot air out and the cold air in.
But straw also absorbs moisture, so in a humid environment,
it can hold a lot of that water from the air
and keep our humidity levels high inside the cabin,
which leads to our wet pillows.
You might've noticed that it's a little dark,
but we do have a little light source over here.
This is our battery pack and this is our lamp.
Basically, at night time, this is the only light we have
other than maybe sometimes flashlights.
( owl hooting )
Greg: Yeah, it's fully off-grid.
The only electricity that we're using is from
batteries that we charge ourselves.
We've been using a mix of solar. We did bikes.
We did a bunch of other things to try and power these
so we can get light in our cabin.
To be honest, we go to bed at, like, 10:00 p.m.
Yeah, there's no data down here. There's no wifi.
- No, yeah. - So it's truly a bed space.
Greg: We are gay lovers,
but we do sleep in separate beds
in general quite a bit,
but here especially, like, to get a good night's sleep.
And someone on the crew has made our beds.
This is not what it looks like. This is amazing.
This is for you to see how beautiful it could be, how much potential there is.
But, you know, we definitely mess this up every day
and have lovely people come and help us keep it clean.
Greg: So this is our kitchen.
There's a lot of our camping stuff here,
so this is actually a stove that we can cook on with propane.
Mitch: We've got a fire pit on that side as well.
This is our sink, but it only really works when it has rain.
Mitch: This was actually collected in one of our episodes,
our water episode.
We created some eavestroughs into a barrel.
It is going in here. You can really feel it.
- Ooh! Oh, my gosh. - Like, it's pretty good.
You can hear it. Like, it's so satisfying.
Oh, my God, it sounds like a full on filling up.
Mitch: Water comes on into here, where you can actually get some water,
which is not drinkable water.
Although I do brush my teeth with that. I don't know if I should or not.
- I just don't swallow it. - It kinda depends. Greg's a risk taker.
But otherwise, we have our water pump here
if and when we want to actually pour that into something
and actually purify it, make sure it's drinkable.
The collected rainwater goes through basic filters
to get rid of leaves and dirt,
and it's clean enough for things like hand washing.
But this water is still run over a roof
that birds and other animals walk all over,
and they can carry bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens.
So to be safe to drink,
we need a high quality carbon filter
that stops microbes too,
because we don't want load of E. Coli in our stomachs.
And this is our shower...
...where if it's rained, we can shower.
'Cause we don't actually have to drink this water,
it's just showering our body and our little bits,
like our butt and our crotch.
Oh, it's spraying on me over here!
- What the hell? - It's trick to get him in.
Oh, my God, I hate this so much.
And there is another shower up there for it hasn't rained
that we sometimes use, but it's just a bit of trek in the morning, so...
Ernie loves to eat grass.
I've given up on telling him to stop.
This is the shower wash station.
Technically it says solar shower, but I'm like, "Is it working?"
- I don't know. - The solar I think is what's pumping the water
to actually come out of the faucet the way it does.
- Oh, I thought it was, like, a solar heater. - It's not the heat.
Yeah, yeah. There's no heat.
The solar panels provided the energy
to pump the water from our storage tanks
up to the showerhead.
But what we didn't have was solar heating
to make that water warm, because I guess the crew
would rather we were clean than happy.
This is how it works.
I love cold showers, so I've really enjoyed it,
and it's been really hot. We're filming in the summer.
But I think Mitch sometimes struggles,
and on rainy days it can be harder.
Now it's been a while. it's been long enough. I'm used to it.
Yeah, I think showering outside's great.
Like, looking at trees, birds.
But then sometimes there are bathrooms right here,
and it's, like, in the morning the crews come,
and just taking dumps while you're showering.
Mitch: So these are compostable toilets.
There's four different stalls.
We use this, as does the rest of the crew.
Ernie, you wanna go in?
- Mitch: Whoops. - Greg: Here's a toilet.
You pee in them, and when you number two in them,
you put a little bit of sawdust down, if you must know.
Mitch: The sawdust firstly covers our nasties,
but more than that, it's an important part of the composting process.
It gives structure and aeration to the pile
so the bacteria can thrive.
We had to choose our wood carefully though.
Some sawdust comes from wood that's been chemically treated
with things like insecticide,
which would also kill off our lovely bacteria.
As long as we treat it right,
the good bacteria in the compost breaks down our waste,
leaving it both safe and smell free.
I guess it's unique that this is, like, a film shoot
and everyone on it has to go into these outhouses.
Mitch: They all knew we'd have to live this way.
- They didn't know they would also have to. - Greg: Yeah.
- Okay. - Yeah, we're used to this.
The crew has made such an amazing effort
to be part of the sustainable work
that we're all trying to do, that it's been really inspiring.
My name is Cara Volchoff. I'm the showrunner on "Shut It Off Asap!"
What's the plan?
Well, the plan is actually sticking the same, babe.
So you are going to work in the rain today.
- Okay, no, that's fine. - Which is really different.
I mean, we're here. We have to live it right?
The only issue would be the cameras, and that's fine.
Not worried about that because we have tents out there. We have umbrellas.
Shoot it as if it wasn't raining.
I do everything from managing talent
to approving wardrobe
to looking at set and composition.
I also live in Video Village here
so that I can see everything that's being captured.
I do a lot.
And also when you're trying to really key in
on the sustainability piece, it adds another layer.
Productions and sets in general
are some of the most wasteful places I've ever seen.
You have call sheets strung across the room.
You have plastic coffee cups.
You have plastic water bottles
that literally they still have water in them.
They're strewn across everywhere.
No one knows whose-- it's disgusting.
It's unbelievable how much waste is left on a set,
and when you wrap and see it all,
it's unsettling, to say the least.
This production is honestly the first time, I'm embarrassed to say,
but it is the first time that I've put a huge focus
on being as sustainable as possible, and that's everything.
That's in how we access our information,
what we eat out of, what we drink out of.
Ooh, stuffed Portobello mushroom. Thank you.
Mitch: Everyone's coming with their own reusable water bottles.
Like, when you walk in, you see people carrying those things.
There's water bottle shame here.
- Yeah. - Which is interesting.
- And-- - Not to shame!
The only drinks we have on set are aluminum cans,
which are recyclable, so it's a nice--
we don't have any plastic water bottles on set.
So I think everyone is taking the initiative.
And if they show up and they forgot,
it's like, "Then you're gonna be thirsty."
So you don't have a choice.
We've been using the mason jars for any water.
From top to tail, this production has been unlike any one I've ever done before.
To be honest, it was just something that we said,
and it was, like, done above and beyond anything we could have expected.
The mandate was to be sustainable,
and from that I was able to just, like, run down a rabbit hole
of figuring out brave new ways to do this.
So I figured if we're not gonna have plastic bottles,
then when why would we have paper cups?
If we're not gonna have paper cups,
why would have say, like, plastic utensils
and disposables that way?
Like, to me that's just the coolest thing.
Everyone has been so onboard. Once you create the environment,
it becomes second nature for people.
It really is more sustainable.
I'm used to it now.
You know, I would drive to the coffee shop
an hour away if I could at the beginning,
but now I just-- I've embraced off-grid living.
Greg: A huge amount of waste comes from how products and food is distributed.
Every time you move up the chain from farm
to warehouse to store, et cetera,
there's an extra layer of packaging used and discarded.
So we are trying to cut out as much of that chain as possible
by buying in bulk and buying closer to the source.
The farm that we're on,
they do sell food one day a week,
and we all get to go and buy food
that's, like, from places that we've been filming.
It's, like, really fascinating.
Like, this is actually what it's about.
And Alicia takes care of our snacks and foods.
My name is Alicia Mogent.
I am the key crafts on this production.
I am head of everything in this kitchen.
When it comes to snacks, drinks,
any type of food that I am making,
to what type of food that we're ordering.
On normal productions of what I've seen, it's usually pre-packaged,
and that causes a lot of waste,
a lot of plastic and all of that.
With here, when buying in bulk,
it's easier to manage your waste of what you're using.
Working with the farmer's market,
it's incredible because, like, you can tell the difference
of the food that you're eating.
Even the eggs, like, when you go in to cook it,
you can tell the difference between a store bought egg
and an egg that's just fresh from the farm from the chicken.
( clucking )
Going to a regular grocery store,
everything is in plastic.
Here, everything I'm putting into a brown paper bag,
and that's reusable at any time, any day that I want.
And I can also use those paper bags for any compost as well.
- All right. Thank you so much. - No worries.
It all comes together full circle.
Mitch: So much of our usual waste is disposable products,
so we wanted to make sure we reused everything as much as possible.
We didn't want to get disposable containers.
Even if they were compostable, it seemed to us
that the best thing we could possibly do would be to reuse.
I was able to find a company called Friendlier.
They operate out of Guelph, and basically what they do
is completely reusable plastic individual containers.
Apparently this is very unique that we do this, and I'm very happy that we do.
I also found a restaurant that we use,
a wonderful place called Einstein's Café in Guelph.
And Rocky, the chef and owner,
is able to accept an order from me two hours before we need it
so that we make sure that only the meals that we need for a day are here.
- Nothing goes to waste. - I got a veggie meal
'cause I can't look at the chickens here and eat them.
Rocky puts them in these containers.
We collect the containers.
We then rinse them and send them back to Friendlier.
They then wash them, sanitize them,
send them back to Rocky, and the whole circle continues.
We like to think about it like a beer company
where you have the glass bottles,
and you bring it back and then you get some change.
Whatever we don't use will go back.
Another restaurant will use it.
Nothing is going to waste here.
This is me eating my gorgeous veggie salad,
and I think my roommate's under here.
We have set up here our different stages of garbage recycling and composting.
We put some big bold letters on everything
to make sure that everybody knows what's what.
I don't want anybody having to look for where things go.
I don't want anybody having to misplace where anything goes.
This is to me is as bulletproof as we can make it.
Anything you don't eat goes into one
of the two composts depending what they are.
The container itself goes into the container bin.
We then wash and rinse that at the end of the day.
It gets packaged up. Every Thursday we get a pickup.
The first couple of days, it was a little rocky getting everybody used to it.
Now all I literally have to do is put bags in these containers
and everybody follows exactly how they're supposed to do it.
It's really wonderful to see the change that happens over a couple of weeks.
And we try our best to only buy unbleached paper towels
and everything else so we can actually compost them once we're done.
This is all of our recycling, our garbage, and our compost.
All the cans have been rinsed.
We then have paper and cardboard,
and then we have the plastics as we need.
This is our actual garbage and these are our compost bins.
This right here I can tell you is about two weeks worth of filming on set.
So, as I said, that's about 25 to 30 people per day,
about ten working days,
this is the amount of recycling,
garbage, and waste that we've come to.
I'm pretty proud of that.
And then we have our worm composter.
Oh, fresh fruit and vegetables go in here.
The worms eat it.
Basically, this is a three-tiered worm composter.
You add things on one layer and then the next,
and the worms steadily make their way up, compost everything.
This would've been from yesterday, I suppose.
This was just salad that nobody ate.
The worms have yet to get to it, but they're starting.
Greg: The worms eat the food scraps, process them,
and turn it straight into compost that comes from their back end.
We didn't add meat and dairy waste
because it is harder for the worms to break down
and other pests could get to them too,
making them rot before the worms do their thing.
That's why we had the crew scrape their food
into two different waste bins
to separate what can and can't go to the worms.
Nick: So as the worms will go through this,
they will eat everything that we put in there.
( rooster crowing )
And then they make, like, very healthy soil.
The farm will then use that soil
and put it in fields or flowerbeds or wherever they like.
Mitch: But we're not leaving this farm with some new dirt.
We're leaving behind all our eco projects
to help this farm be even more sustainable than when we arrived.
Greg: This is a teaching farm,
which is such an incredible place for this show to happen
because we're building all these things
with so many teaching moments in them.
Good job, everyone!
Everdale has been incredibly supportive of the production.
Buffy: We've created a relationship with our hosts
so that whatever we're building will stay,
and then they can use that to do science education and technology education.
Greg: The solar toilet, the aquaponics,
they're gonna keep them in order to teach people about the things we've built.
The idea that these things will have a life
well beyond the life of a television show is very heartening to me.
Greg: One thing we're not leaving behind is all our fabulous outfits.
Look at this secondhand shirt. Silk, gorgeous.
Little cherub babies that look like I could have birthed them.
This one's mine. Look, it's scientific diagrams of plants.
That's an overpriced shirt, actually, that I regret buying.
Our clothing and stuff, we were like,
we really wanna make sure that it is used clothes
or vintage clothes or things like--
- Or our own clothes. - Our own clothes.
Greg: These two are from home.
Anything that was pulled for the show is vintage.
Greg: I knew the clothing industry, and particularly
the fast fashion, expendable side of it was bad,
but while making the show, we found out even more
about how harmful the industry is.
Between toxic chemical dyes, huge water usage,
and artificial fibers that break off in the wash
and fill the world's oceans with microplastics, it's a mess.
So it would be hypocritical for us
to buy a bunch of new shirts to wear for the show.
I kinda never change my bottoms.
It's a sustainable fashion set in the sense
that I'm wearing the same pants in every shot.
( laughs )
Mitch: Sustainability is hard,
but there's lots of places to start.
Anything new, it's just, like, take baby steps.
This was our first real TV show,
and each week on this over 20-person production,
we averaged one or two garbage bags of trash and seven recycling bins.
That works out at barely a kilogram of landfill waste per crew member per week,
and the average Canadian throws out 15 to 20 times that amount just at home,
so we're really proud of how we did.
Seeing the elements of sustainable practices
that have been implemented in the show has been really cool.
And here, seeing how it was easily possible--
well, I shouldn't say easily,
but it was totally possible for all these people,
has kind of inspired me.
( rooster crows )
Being sustainable obviously does take effort,
but one thing that this production made me realize
is once you start, that initial effort is the hardest.
Then systems become in place, and it becomes easier.
What this has taught me is it's just habits. It's all just forming habits.
It's one of those things where if you don't have to think about it,
it just becomes the norm.
Learning this is something that I'm gonna carry on
even after this is done now.
I will never go back to the way I did things before.
I am literally changed forever
because of the experience I've had on this production.
If this whole team can put the effort in to be sustainable,
definitely when we're at home, there has to be a better way that we can support.
Well, it makes me think about so much more
than what I was doing before.
I was never actively thinking about it or not thinking about it.
I just wasn't thinking.
And I'm think I'm thinking now,
so I hope that this show makes people think.
I would say the hardest thing
and what this show has shown me
is sometimes you need that firsthand experience,
like, being here and doing things.
It's a really unique lifestyle, but I have loved it.
And now when I go back to the city, I'm like, "Culture shock."
I'm like, "This is not sustainable."
It's helped me just bring this back to my city life.
Like, you start to realize, you're like, "Oh, my God.
I'm learning about these things. There are things we can all do."
I love realizing that there's so many of these things that we're doing, like,
you know, they're fun, TV, playful things,
but you can scale them down and bring them into your own home.
I wanna start using worms for composting.
Rainwater harvesting, there's no reason why you can't go tomorrow and do that.
Cara: Because of this experience,
everybody here will now go back out
into their respective productions after this
and hopefully treat them the same way.
I hope people take away just, like, any minutia of a shift
in framing where the things that we all consume come from.
It was so great. I'm sad to leave what genuinely feels like camp.
- Yes. - ( cheering )
- Greg: Thank you. - Mitch: Thank you.