CPD Launches Sustainability Playbook for Production Design
CPD launches its Sustainability Playbook, a free national resource offering practical guidance to help production designers and art departments reduce waste, prioritize reuse, and build more circular practices into film and television production.
We’re proud to launch the CPD Sustainability Playbook: Circular Production Design Best Practices for Film & Television, a free resource created to help production designers and art departments make more sustainable choices across film and television production. The Playbook brings together practical guidance, tools, and considerations for reducing waste, rethinking material use, and building more circular practices into the way we design and make sets. Our goal was to create something useful and accessible for art departments across Canada, whether a production is just beginning to explore sustainability or already looking for ways to improve existing practices.
Practical Guidance for the Art Department
The Playbook grew out of several years of conversations around waste, reuse, materials, and the role the art department can play in making production more circular. We wanted to bring practical information together in one place and make it easy to use during the real day-to-day pressures of prep, construction, shooting, and strike.
It covers everything from early design decisions and sourcing to construction, scenic paint, set decoration, props, reuse, recycling, and end-of-production planning.
A large part of a production’s waste is determined well before anything reaches the dumpster. The materials we specify, whether we rent or buy, how sets are built, and whether they can be taken apart and reused all matter. The Playbook looks at those choices specifically from the perspective of production design and the art department.
Rather than prescribing one perfect way of working, we wanted to create a practical starting point. Productions vary enormously in scale, budget, location, and schedule, and sustainable choices have to work within those realities.
Built Through Research and Hands-On Learning
The Playbook was also informed by our Circular Production Design-Build Workshop, where participants spent four weekends designing and building two standing sets while testing approaches to reuse, material selection, construction, disassembly, and waste reduction.
That hands-on experience helped us look more closely at where circular design ideas work well in practice and where the industry still has gaps to solve.
A Living Resource
This is not intended to be a finished resource. We see the Playbook as a living document that will continue to grow as new information, materials, suppliers, case studies, and better practices emerge.
We also want it to be shaped by the people doing this work. If you have a useful tip, case study, photographs, research, resources, or something you think should be included in a future version, we’d love to hear from you.
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The CPD Sustainability Playbook: Circular Production Design Best Practices for Film & Television is available for download free in English and French.
This project was made possible with the generous support of the Canada Media Fund, City of Toronto Film Office, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ontario Creates, and Ontario Green Screen.
