BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Sustainable Streaming Services Lead Industry Into Carbon-Free Future

Following
This article is more than 2 years old.

“Streaming” sounds like something that would make the transcendentalists proud. Though our blue-lit reality is far from the streams and babbling brooks that inspired Walden and Self Reliance, recently, streaming services and the studios attached to them have been putting the nature back into the “stream” and setting an example for the rest of the industry to forge a carbon-free, sustainable future.

WaterBear Network is a new, free streaming service that launched in late 2020 and has quickly begun to lead the industry in sustainability innovation. The platform exclusively hosts videos with environmental themes. The network produces its own content in addition to hosting other’s. The videos specifically center on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and are organized around four key themes from those SDGs: biodiversity, climate change, circularity, and community. 

“[WaterBear strives to tell stories about the SDGs and to] transform them from words and icons into values that people can understand and appreciate,” said Ellen Windemuth, WaterBear’s CEO and founder. 

But, the real mission of WaterBear goes beyond simply communicating these values; it gives viewers the roadmap to act on them as well. Once the credits start rolling on a video, a list of action items pops up for viewers to share information on social media, donate directly to an NGO on that subject matter, or incorporate sustainability practices into their own lives. 

Windemuth began WaterBear after she produced My Octopus Teacher (which is a Netflix film) and saw how its story spurred people into action. “That's actually what I've been doing all my life,” she said. “I'm interested in making films that stimulate and empower people to be more demanding about our future on this planet.”

She was “growing a little tired of making content for broadcasters and platforms that was restricted by advertisers, what advertisers want, or by ratings, and what people thought would rate.”

Thus, with the support of 92 NGO partners, a contingent of B-corp private sponsors, and affluent celebrity activists (like Lily Cole, Maisie Williams, and even Prince Harry), Windemuth and the team at WaterBear were able to create a free streaming platform driven purely by its mission to bring people accurate, accessible information about the climate crisis and to provide a clear roadmap of action items viewers can take after watching. 

WaterBear has innovated a new standard for the industry, not only in how it builds scaffolding around its material but by rethinking the format of the content itself. While WaterBear produces and offers longer feature documentaries, it also hosts a number of what Windemuth called “atomic films,” described as “short little films with big impact.”

She explained: “I realized how long it takes to make these feature documentaries. I love making them; I've made many; I'm continuing to make them, but they take so long, and we don't have that amount of time. So much has to be communicated to people now. And it has to be communicated in a format that they can digest quickly and easily.” Thus, WaterBear has coupled its longer docs with these pithy, punchy videos that meet the ever-shortening attention span of its target audience (the Millennials and Gen Z, between ages 15 and 40). 

For instance, a popular show from WaterBear is So Hot Right Now, a six-episode series that is barely over 20 minutes in its entirety—each episode runs approximately four minutes long, about the length of a video one might watch on Facebook.

While environment-specific companies like WaterBear are particularly suited to hone in and lead the way on content and user-experience, giants like Netflix have the funds and the sway to lead the way in terms of internal sustainability practices.

On the user-end, streaming is a relatively low-carbon practice—especially if you stream on a laptop or smartphone—so conscious customers have little to worry about there. The real carbon cost comes from the production of films and content. After an assessment, done in partnership with Engie Impact, Netflix reported a 2020 carbon footprint of 1,100,000 metric tons. Fifty percent of that was from production, while 45% came from the company’s corporate operations and the remaining 5% came from cloud services, like Amazon Web Services and the Open Connect, which are notoriously carbon intensive. In 2018, Hulu reported that it migrated its data centers to a facility powered by 100% renewable energy

As part of its 2021 sustainability plan, “Net-Zero +Nature,” Netflix aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2022, meaning that the company will keep emitting while also investing in offset projects that reduce atmospheric CO2 levels—things like forest preservation across the globe. As Netflix does this, it will strive for a 45% reduction in internal emissions by 2030, a goal that aligns with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s guidelines.  

Offset projects like this one are not a solve-all favorite among environmentalists, as they allow polluters to keep emitting, while often poorer groups take on most of the costs (often the costs of not developing forestland, now protected as offsets). Eric Niller, a contributor to Wired, explained this conflict well: “What offsets don’t do is force their buyer to change any of its operations,” he wrote in a 2020 piece for the magazine, adding: “Supporters of offsets say they are only an acceptable tool once companies have done everything they can to pollute less.” This, of course, is what Netflix’s Net-Zero-Nature plan outlines on a 2030 timeline. 

Yet, Netflix’s sustainability mission has a larger impact beyond reducing direct emissions; “I think the partner universe that Netflix sits inside has been mobilized,” said Clinton Moloney, managing director of sustainability solutions at Engie Impact, who worked with Netflix to create these goals. 

Moloney explained the impact this announcement has had on Netflix’s suppliers and partners, mobilizing them to meet those carbon emission reductions if they are to keep working with the streaming giant. “Netflix has a very big supplier base and partner base, so they're then able to go and say to those suppliers ‘Our commitment is not 2030, it is 2022. So, I need you to go back and figure out how you're going to help us — not by 2030. We've got like 12 to 18 months so you have to do it now.’”

Moloney explained that the more large, resourced companies like Netflix adopt sustainable practices, the more widespread, affordable, and accessible they will be for all companies to do the same. 

“Because [sustainable technologies are] not scaled to the full potential [they have] to solve for the marketplace, so we have to connect those signals between technology and the demand that's out there. By clarifying those market signals, we believe that new markets for the technologies can be opened faster, in a way that helps companies and governments get access to technology at lower cost,” Moloney said. 

He added, “We know that many of the solutions to the energy transition that underpins our response to climate change are available today, are cost-effective—will save you money and will help you operate better—and can be deployed quickly. I think that time is of the essence.” Essentially: we have the technologies, we just need to make them affordable and available to the non-Netflixes of the world more quickly. 

Emma Stewart, Netflix’s chief sustainability officer, does see the changes Netflix makes internally rippling out to make waves towards low-carbon initiatives across other streaming platforms, production studios, and Netflix’s suppliers. She described this industry-wide influence that Netflix can have as an “eddying effect.”

“As an example, whenever we're evaluating an opportunity to enter electricity supply or electrify vehicles, or bringing clean and mobile power in lieu of diesel generators—just as an example—we always ask ourselves the question, ‘Does this benefit other studios, and could other studios scale this up,’ as opposed to [asking] ‘Can Netflix get it done?’” Stewart said. “One [core principle] is to prioritize scalability over novelty.”

Those eddying effects ripple beyond other studios who can adopt the same internal practices; Stewart and Moloney also see Netflix’s reaching influence in the storytelling it creates.

“There's no doubt that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways in which humans interact,” she said, recalling the sayings of an old mentor who would remind her that “Humans are primates, who tell stories, and that's the defining difference between humans and other great apes.”

“Indeed, science tells us what to do, but it's storytelling that makes us want to do it,” she added.

Windemuth, at WaterBear, echoed this sentiment: “Emotional ecology works,” she said. “No one has ever been converted by a pie chart. I don't believe that stats and pie charts are gonna move the audience into doing anything, certainly not in the time that we have left to make a difference. So, what storytelling does, especially the kind of storytelling that WaterBear does...it greatly increases the speed in which information can be transmitted and grasped right and internalized and used.”

While all of WaterBear’s programming exclusively centers on environmental messaging, Netflix’s internal productions—outside of their explicitly environment-centered programs—do so more delicately, weaving “green moments,” into comedies, dramas, mysteries, and the like, as Stewart and Moloney described it. It’s something that shows how environmental concerns and awarenesses are becoming more and more a part of everyday life, even if it’s not the entire focus. 

It’s a lesson that translates to what other businesses can take away from the work Netflix is doing—even if it’s not the entire mission, environmentalism needs to be incorporated into the story somehow. And, in Stewart’s eyes, this is an opportunity for any business, not a burden. 

“Business at its core,” she said, “is about managing risk, and what is a changing climate, but a massive risk, whether it be a physical chronic or acute risk, whether it be a regulatory risk, whether it be a consumer risk, whether it be a reputational or license to operate risk.”

Yet, risk does not need to be a threat to business, Stewart believes. It is room for growth: “Risk and opportunity are kind of two sides of the same coin. I've witnessed that firsthand in my career. If you manage sustainability with narrow blinkers on, then it's just about where's the next wildfire going to be. But if you manage sustainability — and in particular climate, which has become most critical and urgent of the sustainability considerations—with an opportunity lens, the sky's the limit as to what corners of the world or the market might lead your company to explore.” 

And the data show that those corners of the world and market are vast; WaterBear believes its potential audience is 100 million viewers, and last year alone 160 million households around the world tuned in to one film or show on Netflix that centered on environmental issues.

“We at Netflix serve the global population; we aspire to entertain the world. And so what concerns the world concerns us,” Stewart explained. 

The world is watching and the world is ready for environmental programming and environmental practices that match. It’s time for businesses to put them in play.

Follow me on Twitter