38 GENIUS INTERVIEW Aaron Matthews, BAFTA
AARON MATTHEWS: “THE PRINCIPLE IMPACT WE HAVE IS VIA THE CONTENT WE MAKE″ FEED talks to Aaron Matthews, BAFTA’s head of industry sustainability, about saving the planet through the Albert Consortium, one episode at a time
FEED: How did you come to work on the Albert project at BAFTA? AARON MATTHEWS: I studied the environment and geography at university – my passion is understanding natural systems and how they operate. Obviously, climate change is the most interesting example, because it’s at the interface between society and natural systems. And that was what pushed me into this area: the need to understand climate change. My first job in this area was working on Warner Bros. Entertainment at Shepperton and Leavesden, trying to help them reduce their carbon footprint. Then I was at the BBC for a number of years, working with production teams. And I’ve been at BAFTA for five years now, working to coordinate an industry response to climate change. FEED: The BBC and BAFTA collaborated to create Albert, the sustainability initiative for the UK film and TV industry. What is Albert? AARON MATTHEWS: Albert is a collaborative project where everyone in the industry is welcome to come and talk about sustainability challenges and implement common industry solutions. It’s a project that brings film and TV businesses together
in a neutral space and allows them to allocate a bit of resource to collaboration and working together to implement industry solutions. FEED: Where are we now in terms of transitioning to sustainable practices? AARON MATTHEWS: The end of 2018 saw the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C . It was an update on how much time we’ve got left to beat climate change and on the prevailing political will to limit the amount of warming the planet can tolerate. In that report, the limit we can tolerate was revised from 2°C to 1.5°C and the window for us to deliver it was reduced from 20 years down to ten. In defiance of that, there has been a rise in optimism. International leaders are calling for people to be optimistic about this challenge, because the report was clear this still remains completely within our grasp, which is good to hear. FEED: What reactions do you encounter when you talk to people in the industry about climate change? AARON MATTHEWS: When I tell people, ‘Your carbon footprint is around 12 tonnes
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