Looking to book film talent into an eco-friendly hotel? And to buy recyclable swag for your crew? Or, more importantly, do you want green power generators or construction materials?

The Toronto film and TV industry has just been handed an important new tool by eco-group Green Screen Toronto, which on Friday capped a year of research into the media business with the launch of an ecologically friendly website (www.greenscreentoronto.com/resource_guide) and a book, the Green Screen Toronto Resource Guide.

The launch took place, appropriately, during the Planet in Focus festival, which took the lead in the initiative with partners including Filmport, the CFTPA, unions and Comweb/William F. White.

‘Professionals who work in the industry know that film and television can be quite wasteful and the business doesn’t need to work like that anymore,’ says Jennifer Arnold, who headed up the research. ‘There was a real appetite to do something different. If you can tie health and safety into some of these issues — working with chemicals and finding greener alternatives, then people feel better about the work that they’re doing.’

The research broke down what materials, resources and vendors were being used in the industry. It identified the categories of items and services required during and after a typical shoot. ‘We needed real harmony and integration between the content and the [web guide’s] architecture. It had to be intuitive — a good resource, not a massive, encyclopedia kind of thing,’ says Arnold.

‘If you flip open the Green Resource Guide and go to ‘transportation,’ you’ll see car-sharing services and alternative fuel,’ adds researcher Melissa Felder, who is also working on a ‘green certification’ program.

The guide provides a massive amount of well-assembled data, but also points out problem areas for environmental activists in the business. ‘There were more challenging things, things that are hard to green, like film development, anything involving mass amounts of chemicals. In some places there just is not yet an alternative,’ says Arnold.

‘But what we did do was create places in the guide that says ‘an alternative for this does not exist yet.’ And I guess I was thinking that a really savvy business operator might take at the holes and go, I can do this, I can provide that.’