How Sky’s A League of Their Own series 18 reduced its carbon footprint by 47%!

Sky’s BAFTA-winning sports entertainment panel show, A League of Their Own, produced by CPL Productions, a Seven.One Studios company, has been on the air for an impressive 18 series, with series 19 having just wrapped filming. Having won a Sustainable Production Award at the Global Production Awards, we talked to the production team about how they’ve gone above and beyond when it comes to sustainability.

The average carbon emissions for an hour of entertainment programming is 12.64tCO2e/hr (2022 Annual Review), the emissions per hour for series 18 of A League of Their Own was 2.29CO2e/hr, 82% lower than the average!

These low emissions are thanks to a thoughtful, well-planned approach to production that includes making the most of the data and tapping into the expertise of sustainability advisors.

Data matters

When making sustainable choices for series 18 of A League of Their Own, the production team was already in a good position. The team had gone through albert certification for previous series, and so had a wide breadth of data to draw upon and inform where the most impactful sustainable choices could be made.

Anna Panays, CPL’s Line Producer on A League of Their Own, began by looking at the carbon footprints and Carbon Action Plans (CAPs) for series 16 & 17 as a starting point to get an accurate picture of how sustainability was already being handled.

“Looking at data from previous series on the albert Toolkit was really useful – it helped identify the emissions hotspots that the team could focus on in areas of travel, materials power and accommodation. We’d also moved to a smaller studio space, which was helpful as it made us think more sustainably and gave us a fresh start for series 18.” – Anna Panays, Line Producer

The data fed into an emissions reduction strategy for series 18, leading to big wins including:

No domestic flights used during production, cast and crew were encouraged to travel by train and public transport where possible and electric vehicles were used for production errands

No single use plastics and beef-free catering

Selecting local hotels with green/eco-credentials for any production team, crew or talent that needed overnight accommodation.

Reducing waste to landfill, by donating unwanted sets, props, furniture and costumes to PropUp Project and local community initiatives and social enterprises.

Picture Zero was also brought in and helped create an emissions reduction strategy that the team could use to boost the choices it made.

When Picture Zero had their initial meetings with the team behind A League of Their Own, they could see that the team included albert veterans, but they hadn’t previously had the resources to go line by line on the calculator and research the best solutions for each area of emissions.

The power of sustainability advisors comes from their specialist knowledge. They have the skills, contacts and expertise to help a production level up. In the case of A League of Their Own, this ranged from giving the production team day-to-day support on any sustainability matters that came up on set and giving briefings to the art department on circular economy practices.

When combined with an engaged production team (as was the case with A League of Their Own), the results speak for themselves. The team hit it out of the park, having reduced their carbon footprint by 47% compared to series 17!