Built on once-polluted industrial land, Toronto’s Filmport studio complex is about to glow green.

Ken Ferguson, president of Toronto Film Studios, which is spearheading the Filmport construction, said his Green to Screen initiative aims to reduce waste and energy use by film and TV producers at the top-drawer studio complex after its planned March 2008 launch.

‘No one wants to be seen as a dinosaur,’ Ferguson said of producers, unions and guilds that have combined to help make Filmport environmentally sound.

Mechanical systems going into Filmport include e-argon filled windows, motion sensor controls to shut off high-efficiency lighting and air conditioning when studio space is empty, exterior lights on photo-cells, and instant hot-water systems.

The studio is also introducing bio-swales for storm water treatment, to guard against salt and other potentially toxic materials running off into Lake Ontario, and has installed separate collection systems for clean roof-water to help irrigate the local landscape.

Filmport will also help visiting productions do their part by supplying information on how to recycle wood and metal from used film sets, or compost food waste, for example.

Ferguson said he’s long been uncomfortable as a studio operator seeing crews collapse entire sets and ship them off to a Michigan garbage dump, or not shut off idling vehicles.

‘We need to bring film shoots in from the dark ages,’ he said.

The Green to Screen initiative was spurred in part by the recent The Incredible Hulk shoot at TFS, which embraced green practices by, for example, renting hybrid cars and using a yellow pine wood in place of rain-forest woods when building sets.

TFS supplied Hulk with an intensive recycling program, which will be replicated at Filmport.

Also inspiring Filmport is IATSE Local 873, members of which have educated themselves on using more environmentally friendly paints and other building materials.

Aside from potential cost savings over time, Ferguson said an eco-friendly Filmport aims to do its part to limit the film and TV industry’s immense carbon footprint.

‘In the entertainment industry, it’s a little bit ‘flavor of the month.’ That’s okay. Now we have some momentum going. There’s a lot of desire to do this,’ he said.