Eco Heroes: Going green on the small screen

Music

>> Julianna Margulies: We are a green production. I mean, it's something I feel very proud of, because when you're on a set, especially we work 16 hour days, at least, and the amount of water bottles that are left all over the set, the amount of papers that are just thrown, the amount of waste on regular set is unbelievable.

>> Brooke Kennedy: It came up almost immediately. The first time I met Julianna Margulies, we sat down to talk about what this company would look like. It's one of the things that we both zeroed in on together. Besides how to make it a friendly company and to really be in the workday environment, we really asked ourselves what we could do, not just as citizen, but as New York citizens.

>> Julianna Margulies : Brooke Kennedy, who runs everything around here, came to me when we first decided that we were going to shoot in Green Point in Brooklyn, and she said, what do you think of doing a green set? And I said, nothing would make me prouder. And she said, well, you have to be the example.

>> Brooke Kennedy: Our leadership and our role models come from the actors for the most part, because of clearly who they are and how they lead the company and the fact that they are the face of the company. So if Jules uses a water bottle, people will use a water bottle.

>> Julianna Margulies: So I walk around with my bottle. You know, it takes a little effort and then you get used to it.

>> Alan Cumming: The amount of bottles of water that we drink, taking one to the gym, tubbing one in the car, and you just carry this thing around with you all the time, that already is a huge burden.

>> Julianna Margulies: We give every director that comes, we give them a kit that has a "Good Wife" canteen bottle that you can pour your, have your water in.

>> Brooke Kennedy: Conservation starts with people. You cannot mandate nor legislate this, and that's been really eye-opening to me. People have to want to do this, so what you have to do is provide an environment where it's applauded and accepted.

>> Alan Cumming: Being that proactive I think's really good. In my house upstate I've got wind turbines, and so I sell my wind energy back to New York State, which is very satisfying.

>> Brooke Kennedy: It's really a series of small things that will lead to the large effort. On our largest stage, it's all solar paneled on the top, so our landlord's into it. We met with lighting companies that are coming out with LCDs. Now, they're not ready for us, but they knew we wanted to be at the forefront of it, so there's a constant conversation.

>> Alan Cuming: The thing that really got me was the solar panel things on the roof of the studio. I mean, that's a big step, and I really admire that.

>> Brooke Kennedy: Xerox alone, the average copy on a television show are over 100,000 monthly. We called up other shows. We do 50 percent less. That's' because of electronic distribution. We go down, we poll everybody, we encourage them to read online, to use Kindles, to use iPads and stuff. That's a big deal, and we're in production for ten months. So that's a lot of copies.

>> Julianna Margulies : We print out the first script, and then everything after that is on your computer, all the rewrites.

>> Brooke Kennedy: We did a soda fountain instead of cans of soda. That has saved us a ton on waste products and stuff, not having cans everywhere, so it's affected the garbage, it's affected everything. That's really been interesting. We got rid of all paper and plastics in the office. We purchased a dishwasher. Everything is done on flat wear and plates and stuff -- same thing in catering here. We feed probably 70 to 100 people a day. Now, sometimes when we're out, we have to go to paper, but for the most part, as long as we're washing and using, we've done a lot there.

>> Julianna Margulies: We're trying our best to make it a green set, because the waste is just astronomical. I mean, I even noticed the first day we shot, how much less garbage there was. It was pretty amazing.

>> Brooke Kennedy: Creating an environment here and having an environment where everybody is, as I said, a better citizen and has concern about the world, once these doors are open and it's not that selfish, makes for a better product.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====